TO Rewrite: B4 — 13. Divine Theater

1. Rachel Park (Our Lunar Hare!)

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Shadow rails bled into existence through the obsidian vault above. Their darkness was a negation of light itself—not merely black but an absence that devoured meaning.

Butter’s aquamarine eyes tracked the converging, dimensional geometry with lazy interest. It was rather shoddy work, to be frank. All power, no finesse.

Not 4th-dimensional. Not even close. An intimidation attempt. Tragic.

On the brighter side, I’m learning so much lately!

Floating in the air, Butter crossed her legs and observed with patience.

After all, he had yet to make his grand entrance, and she loved a good show, no matter the posturing.

On the other hand, her escort, Rachel, and the others scrambled, shouted, and tried so hard to keep their composure. Butter had to admire their attempts at maintaining their frameworks without their Greater Seeds.

Rachel’s breathing technique stuttered, coughing and wincing at the strain she’d already put on her body—Priss would love the hare. She didn’t know when to stop pushing.

Scarlet’s blood whipped defensively around them, her spiritual infusion somewhat spotty, but she was trying hard! The way the Eldritch-touched girl seemed to blend into anything and everything still put up a bit of a wall inside her.

How long until she realizes that her soul is already expanded? What does that say that she can grow it twice? Now that is a golden question… It’s almost as if her soul itself has multiple layers that correspond to reality itself. What does that mean? I actually don’t know.

I love things I don’t know!

So much for trying to learn more by seeing her act in practice. It is as if she is in all things, around all things, and passing through all things at the same time…or at least connected to something that is…

She’s more of a mystery now than before.

Maria prayed in rapid Spanish, keeping the children close to her in protective light. It was impressive to see her find a tiny bit of leeway. Well, sort of. She was still suppressing an incredible amount of that bottled power.

Empires weren’t built in a day, though.

Butter’s gaze had to linger on Alexa as she waited for the initial stage prep of her soon-to-be opponent.

There’s something unsettlingly potent about that force she’s connected to… It overpowered my own attempts to suppress it, even if for a moment before I released the Seed to do the rest. It’s adapted to regulate, not change… Something else is sparking the change in her. Something…infinite. How delightfully frightening!

Conquest and Wakalapi even struggled a tad under the oppressive atmosphere the Conductor rode, yet Butter’s Life shell kept the mortals more or less standing.

Such adorable mice. I’ll have to give them a good show.

The Eye of Utelira pulsed warm against her chest, fourth-dimensional Divine Force compressed into this quaint three-dimensional space. Like forcing an ocean through a keyhole—possible, but requiring such delicate control.

Rails screamed into being, sparking arcs of white-blue lightning as iron geometry cut through dimensions like scissors through paper. The ties stretched across horizons that should not exist, splitting the air with the smell of ozone and hot steel.

“Aye! Aye! Chica, those things are huge!” Maria’s voice cracked below her. “What’s the play?”

Butter put a finger to her lips.

“Shhh. We need him to finish his grand introduction. First appearances are important. We have to let him roast, as the kids back home would say.”

“Cook, High Queen. It’s let him cook,” Adoncia sighed, not sounding nearly as stressed as the others. “Is it impossible for you to run these things past me before you say them so confidently?”

Oh, that’s half the fun, Blue Eyes!

And then came the train.

It did not arrive so much as impose itself, carriages grinding into view from angles that defied sanity. Wheels screeched, but not on tracks—on reality itself, throwing sparks that burned holes in the air. Each window was a mouth, yawning open in perfect unison, howling with whistles of compressed souls.

Sand spilled from the carriages in significant cataracts, waterfalls of burial earth.

Every grain whispered with the voice of someone once alive, secrets of bone and tomb cascading into black rivers that swirled into the desert floor. From the rivers rose shapes—forty-foot golems of sand and iron, their forms crackling as the very electricity of the rails stitched them together.

Each giant’s body was a mass of shifting black beads of iron, faces half-formed in its chest, arms that collapsed and reformed like dunes in a storm. Their footsteps ground out thunder, the resonance of entire graveyards compressed into a single stride.

The locomotive screamed again, a whistle that tore through flesh and soul alike. Time staggered. Ears bled—if not for her protection. Sparks danced from its iron flank, every note a dirge: “All aboard the final station! Transformation or termination.”

And from the engine itself, he emerged.

The Conductor unfolded from shadow and steel, his form first a man, then a titan.

Seven feet. Fifteen. Twenty.

Shadow literally boiled off him like steam from a furnace, rising in great plumes that stank of coal smoke and entropy. His coat stretched long, stitched from space itself, buttons like miniature pyres snuffed out. The brim of his cap was an eclipse, hiding features that shifted like reflections in broken glass.

Rails twisted around him like serpents. His voice was grinding metal and existential despair, the language of brakes screeching, of pistons hammering, of inevitability hummed.

“Passengers, tonight, you are welcomed into the experiment. Your destination: beyond form. Beyond flesh. Beyond meaning… You will become the transit to a new life.”

Shadow tendrils lashed out from the rails, black cords of entropy, crackling with stolen lightning, the sky rippling as if an ocean tide.

From high above, he leered upon them, arms open, inviting them to their final destination. And…Butter clapped.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

“Not a terrible introduction! Isolating the town. Spatial manipulation for dramatic effect. Hell’s corruption sprinkled with Eldritch seasoning, and the music! Not my style, but my sister would rave at those unholy cries.

She floated higher, legs crossed, aquamarine eyes gleaming with appraisal.

“But!” She wagged a finger, her companions frowning up at her like children scolded mid-sermon. “The delivery loses points for subtlety. I mean, darling, why stop at forty feet? If you’re going for spectacle, go big. My last major encounter filled the entire sky with a chained death entity. In comparison, this is just—oh, I hate to say it, really I do… It’s just pedestrian. Mmm. Lacking.”

Adoncia’s voice brushed her mind, dry as always. “High Queen, must you provoke the Eldritch train titan who just announced our deaths?”

Naturally! Butter sang back, her mental tone bright as champagne fizz—at least, she heard champagne was fizzy; she needed to find some before going back to Priss. It would be rude not to, Blue Eyes.

Meanwhile, Conquest snarled inside her own link, chains rattling with irritation.

“High Queen, this…thing dares invoke inevitability and death in front of us… Is there no respect for the Empress? He presumes to embody dominion.”

Relax, darling, Butter purred across their bond, batting away a testing tendril that crackled into harmless light before it reached the mortals. You’ll get your chance to pout and complain to my big sister about stolen titles and vibes when we return. For now, let him posture.

The sand golems stomped forward, every footfall shedding faces that screamed before collapsing back into the dunes of their bodies. Bolts of rail-lightning forked through their torsos, animating them like grotesque puppets.

Butter tilted her head, tapping her chin with mock appraisal, catching Rachel’s gaze not on the overhead calamity…but her.

I must say, the execution of this soul harvesting is rather…primitive. I’m giving him a chance! Look at our audience? I must show them that we’re reliable! They’ll go preaching about this back to their general and leaders. Maybe they’ll build a statue of me! Do you think I look better in gold or marble white?

No—onyx! Yes, onyx, for Priss’ sake, with aquamarine inlays for the eyes.

That would really set the tone.

“High Queen…” Adoncia mumbled dryly.

“Fools,” the Conductor roared through collapsing spatial bridges, raising his hands for rails to twist skyward. “You stand upon the platform of extinction. Every race, every kingdom, every god shall ride the rails of inevitability. The whistle has blown—it is only a matter of time!”

“Chica?!”

“Rachel!” Alexa choked, still trying to recover.

Wakalapi simply watched from a calm, collected position, tracking every movement made.

“It’s fine,” Rachel whispered to the others, Grace practically bouncing on her toes and shouting with energy as Scarlet pressed closer to the hare. “He’s right… It’s only a matter of time. The fight’s already decided.”

“Now, now, Rach. Not everyone can be as artistic or refined as my big sister. She’d have sculpted these poor souls into a proper opera, like she did for Conquest and Adoncia here… Perfected undeath.”

The lightning swirled around the unearthly tracks, collecting to send bolts as large as her thigh across her Life bubble, and train whistles split spatial cracks—Hellfire leaked out in rivers of boiling blood across the plains.

“The end…is upon you.”

The blast wasn’t nothing—if nothing was like a leaf smacking her in the face.

The arcs left faint smudges against her barrier. She gasped, one hand to her chest as she allowed a discoloration to her shell for dramatic effect.

“Oh! My bubble, scuffed! Quick, someone fetch me a tailor.”

Adoncia and Conquest snickered.

Energy tore through the parched, corrupted soil, and the chaotic force dwindled into oppressive silence.

The Conductor loomed, his body flickering like a mirage stitched from soot and lightning, rails coiling around him as if the dimension itself bent to his gravity.

“Unusual… It appears you are not as weak as I was led to believe;  former goddess.”

“Led to believe?” Butter chimed, feeling a pulse of excitement run through her veins as she floated a bit higher. “You were warned about me specifically? Now, that makes me bubble with curiosity. Grace, I think someone broke into your world.”

“Sounds like a girl’s luck,” the cowgirl returned with a forced smile, tipping her hat up to see the pull back from their advance. The scene was settling with the Conductor fixated on her. It was almost time for Butter to do her performance. “So, uh, I’ve already gained a level. Y’all? This is insane.”

“Oh, it’s only just begun,” Butter promised, flashing her teeth. “Are you done playing around, Mr. Conductor? I think it’s time we see what you’ve been experimenting with. You’ve already set the stage…”

She gestured at the infected landscape. “Your portal is nearly complete… The soul golems, the spirit corruption, the devil pattern spread across the landscape with your hellish smallpox variant active. Your true master is awaiting their return. Can you deliver?”

Rachel, Scarlet, and the others tensed at her words, glancing around, but you couldn’t see it unless you were at Butter’s height. Lightning danced across the horizon, not randomly, no…drawing lines to complete a pattern.

Rails groaned as the Conductor spread his arms wide, voice swelling like an organ hymn dragged through rust.

“The skies turn black with the souls of the fallen!”

And they did.

The heavens churned into a cataract of shadow, thousands of phantoms bleeding upward like ash on the wind. Their wails stitched together into a single, lidless eye, vast as the horizon, staring down with pupil of absolute night.

The golems raised their arms in perfect unison. Hellfire boiled from their torsos, veins of molten blood spiraling skyward to feed the eye. Chains erupted from the torn earth, gnashing through reality like jaws, dragging something colossal upward.

“The Lost Prince of Diseases shall ride!” the Conductor declared, his shadowed jaw splitting into a grin of iron teeth. “The Third Circle opens, and with it comes the end of flesh, of hope, of all that crawls and weeps!”

The world heaved. The desert cracked into rivers of pus and flame, bones writhing in the soil like worms tasting rain. The heavens split, a colossal eye swelled until it spanned the entire sky itself, dripping rot like falling tears that sank into sand and opened rifts into the infernal plains.

Rachel staggered, her breathing shallow as sweat beaded from her brow, yet her vision was shockingly steady, as if she’d seen something like this before.

“Tier-3… This isn’t mid-quest. This is the endgame, Butter. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Scarlet’s blood faltered in its whip, recoiling toward her as though it knew better. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! We can’t fight that! Wait, is this like—like Izanami’s Hell Princess, Rachel? Are we really about to face that? That’s a Circle Lord’s herald or some shit!”

“Not exactly,” Rachel smirked, making Butter’s heart swell with anticipation—she was just like Priss and her. “Yseress is under heavy seals. This? This is unsealed.”

Grace pulled out her last remaining pistol, spinning it with a forced grin. “Not to be spoiled milk here, but, honey pie, my [Calamity Bullet]’s reachin’ the one million mark. Last time it was like that…Boss was makin’ mini-nukes by movin’.”

Even Maria’s prayers stumbled, syllables tumbling into frightened gasps and curses in Spanish.

Butter only tilted her head, golden hair drifting in the searing winds. Her glowing gaze never left the burning eye overhead. She whispered, almost fondly:

“For Life, there is no peace, no rest…only growth.”

The Eye of Utelira pulsed against her chest as if caught in the brilliance of a solar flare. Honey-gold wind spiraled outward, lifting her hair, her dress weaving in the celestial currents, and her fan appeared in her hand with a crisp flick.

The necklace’s radiance sank into her soul, dipped into the depths of her past lives, and collected at the fan’s ribs until it glowed like a captive dawn.

Her voice rose, lyrical, cutting through the approaching apocalypse itself:

“The Plague Author’s vision is finished. Soldiers of Hell, minions of the Infernal Train, hear the call of the Morning and Evening Star.”

No beam followed. No thunderclap.

One gesture.

One action.

Butter’s fingers unfurled her paper fan with a crisp snap that sounded like thread breaking more than a roaring wave. And…

The sky simply split.

The vertical eye that had devoured heaven shuddered as its pupil filled with molten gold. The wound widened downward, a single clean stroke that parted shadow, blood, and flame. Reality itself peeled like silk under a hot blade.

The Conductor reeled, shadow and steel convulsing as his form buckled—rails snapped, lightning stuttered, his titanic body cleaving into two as though an invisible editor had drawn a line across the page and struck delete.

“Impossible…” he rasped, his grinding-iron voice broken into static.

Butter lowered her fan, slowly closed it, Hell’s souls singing in glorious relief as their corruption was lifted. A smile warmed her lips as blinding as sunrise and twice as merciless.

“You can summon plagues, darling…but it is only soul deep. All I need do is write the cure. You are lucky you didn’t meet my big sister… You’d have deflated like a balloon. Sadly, you just don’t meet my standards. Better luck with the next girl. Bye-bye!”

She waved and blew him a kiss.

It was gold. Sparkly. Slow as a drifting cloud.

When it touched him, the nightmare unwound into something quaint—a copper wind chime, tinkling gently, each note a soul set free.

Butter turned to her stunned companions, eyes bright with mischief. “Wasn’t that delightful? And to think—he thought he was the headliner. Such an inflated ego, right?!”

“I absolutely could not have said it better!”

Hmm?

The voice carried theatrical precision—each syllable placed like a mark on a stage.

Butter’s brow furrowed as reality rippled in front of her.

Non-dimensional travel.

Not teleportation.

Something else entirely.

The air cracked like breaking glass.

A dazzling woman’s grinning face appeared.

The woman’s green eyes sparkled with calculated ambition as she raised one gloved hand. “What a spectacular performance! Though I must say, the finale was rather…predictable, High Queen.”

It was the stone at her collar that snagged Butter’s eyes.

Deep red. Pulsing. Hungry.

Reality warping…

She hardly made the connection before it happened.

The Eye of Utelira at Butter’s chest flickered—still cooling from its massive output, Divine Energy cycling down through dimensional frequencies from its output from 4th-dimensional to 3rd.

For just a moment.

A fraction of a second, Butter existed between states.

Neither fully anchored to the fourth dimension nor completely present in the third.

Desynchronized.

Oh, you clever thing!

“High Queen!” Conquest roared, her horse launching toward her like a comet.

It was slow, though—reality was slow—inside the pulse of the jewel reflected in Butter’s eyes.

Well, this is unexpected.

The woman’s fingers twitched.

The stone erupted with crimson light that bent wrong. Not Divine. Not magical. Alchemical—reality rewritten through equivalent exchange…of souls locked within its liquid crimson core. The stone screamed as it reached for the Eye of Utelira, blood boiling inside the crystal as it tried to grasp even a fraction of fourth-dimensional power.

Butter’s necklace ripped from her throat.

The force cracked the air itself, sending golden sparks cascading as her divine anchor tore free. For the first time, genuine surprise flickered across Butter’s features.

“Oh! That’s actually quite impressive—”

A woman stepped through—no, performed her entrance through a mercury-smooth mirror that materialized from nothing.

Midnight blue coat pristine. White Gibson Girl updo arranged with mathematical perfection. A small top hat floating above her head like a crown that gravity had forgotten about.

This was a woman of the theater.

The ground erupted.

Chains burst through the earth that shouldn’t have held her.

Not iron.

Not steel.

Something else infused with a single bone.

It reeked of expired divinity, converting her own Divine Force into her prison.

A dead god’s bones, each link a crystallized essence harvested from fragmented sacred items collected and mixed.

They wrapped around Butter’s limbs with the weight of fallen heavens.

The stone against the woman’s collar began cracking immediately, hairline fractures spreading as it tried to contain the Eye of Utelira’s power.

A smile lifted Butter’s lips, spotting the hare below, trying to control her breath, attempting to bypass the warped reality—she was one of the few who could, at least consciously. Were they scared for her? Such little faith.

All she needed was three seconds.

Three seconds to her prison’s detonation.

“You appear to be struggling, my—”

The woman’s composed expression faltered, though a smile remained.

“Frank! Wow me!”

From above, three figures descended in perfect synchronization.

A family that wasn’t by their oddly synchronized souls—very close to perfected undeath.

A father, mother, and child.

They moved with the unified purpose of dolls on the same string.

Wrong in every fundamental way and the opposite of her sister’s method.

The father caught Adoncia’s rage-fueled club as time accelerated, not even flinching, even when her desperation caused her to do her first pure soul strike.

“Get out of—”

His backhand sent the oni maid flying straight through the town buildings to rip into the earth just before launching at the Native American.

In that moment, the magic lady placed the Eye of Utelira inside a pure black box—all traces of its colossal Divine power vanished to Butter.

They sealed a 4th-dimensional object?

Wow. Wow, wow, wow!

“Kneel!” Conquest commanded with divine authority that should have forced her own siblings to take the stance.

Yet…the family didn’t even pause.

“Shit. Rachel, I—”

The mother slammed into Conquest’s horse with shocking force, redirecting their momentum as her stitched-together fingers wrapped around the horsewoman’s throat.

The child somehow pierced through Scarlet’s blood to tackle the shocked vampire girl just as shadows were wrapping around her Life-infused frame.

In less than one second, they were locked into another conflict.

That’s not immunity, Butter hummed to herself, sweeping the scene with growing respect. That is pure, unbridled collective willpower, freely given to another party. Finally…

Calling upon her own created frameworks for the swiftest action, a light aura collected around her—too late.

“Fascinating!” A cultured voice called from the shadows, a pocket watch with strange gear patterns instead of hours ticking in random directions. “A fraction too late, but salvageable.”

A tall man stepped through the mirror’s surface—shoulder-length blond hair perfect despite the chaos. His bright blue eyes studied everything with scientific delight. Silver-framed glasses caught the light as he adjusted them while turning his sight to his creations.

“The spiritual unification matrices are performing beyond parameters! Success in restraint will likely fail without further intervention. I’ll need to perform minor tweaks when I return to the lab. Oh, where are my manors? High Queen,” he greeted her with a slight bow.

He threw something—a small device that sparked with energies that shouldn’t exist.

Not magic.

Not Divine power.

Not Eldritch.

Not even anti-magic.

Chaos given form.

Disharmony crystallized.

It passed through Butter’s barriers, her restoring soul harmony failing like it wasn’t there at all. The energy wrapped around her soul, introducing glitches into reality itself—misfortune, but on a more manipulated level.

Her spiritual framework began to fray—not destroyed but confused, like a symphony where every instrument suddenly forgot what key they were in.

“Oh, this is delightful!” Butter laughed even as the chaos energy constricted her soul, collapsing any attempt to gather spiritual force. “I am learning all sorts of new things! You’re introducing errors into the base code of my soul! Fundamental force corruption—misdirection? How wonderfully innovative!”

Another device flew through the air. This one didn’t attack—it severed, cutting her connection to her Seed with surgical precision.

Conquest, try to… Conquest? I’m cut off from the Nexus? The chaos is disrupting our twin soul harmonics… This is truly dangerous!

“Now this is actually impressive. I’d clap if I were able, but I’m a tad bound!” Her genuine appreciation rang clear. “I literally cannot form a framework because the foundation keeps shifting. And now you seal off my Seed? Brilliant! I’m totally helpless. Wow… What’s your name?”

“Frank, my lady. I look forward to getting better acquainted,” the handsome man grinned. “Oh—Adelaide, you best work on the hare. Chaos is her home…”

“Already ahead of you, sweetheart.”

Rachel bent low to jump, slipping past the warping space-time as her breath synchronized, then…the floating woman’s snapping fingers fractured reality.

Space kaleidoscoped.

Everyone vanished into the fractures.

In the spiral, she pulled out a sheet from nowhere.

Just an ordinary sheet, but it thrummed with power that reeked of stage magic elevated to a divine art.

“The goddess comes with us, darlings.” Adelaide’s theatrical flair was perfect. “Frank, secure the Horsewoman. She’s a problem.”

“Of course…”

The blond bowed just as Conquest became a blur, and darkness—chaos swirled around the man’s frame. It came between him and Conquest, swallowing her conquering light.

Butter knew what met her—the same chaos energy twisted her power against herself.

No. It was worse than that.

“The Empress's chains! How are you…affecting them? This shouldn’t be possible! High Queen!”

“Nothing’s impossible,” Frank said pleasantly. “Just improbable. And improbability can be manipulated with the right tools.”

The sheet descended toward Butter. She could have dodged—even bound, even severed, she had options. Well, maybe that was a bit of a stretch. She may have had one or two options. Yet, a simple glance toward Rachel as Adelaide descended to engage her made Butter relax.

The hare was grinning.

Sweat-slicken, looking as if she’d drop any second, true, but smiling nonetheless.

Hmm. Honestly…this is more interesting.

They cut me off from my power…but my power is still cutting them off from their Seeds.

Let’s see where this goes.

“Rachel, dear,” she called as the sheet approached, “remember what I taught you about frameworks! Save the High Queen!”

Reality folded as Adelaide laughed.

“Unlikely, blonde. Welcome to the show.”

Butter’s response was pearly teeth.

“I love a front row seat!”

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