Chapter 210: End of the Line

“That’s horrifying…” Treeka spoke in a quiet tone as she stared into the thick curtain of smoke. She sounded a little too monotonous. Her body was moving slowly; potentially from shock. She threw a confused look at Raquina. “The engine runs on wood? Is that why you didn’t want to show me?”

She glanced back into the Lavish, her gaze getting stuck on a large pile of particularly thick logs. “Wait, is that there me?”

“Bell,” Theora intoned, “Do you still have mana potions left?”

“Yes,” Bell replied, her voice cold. Her tendrils were gathering into a taut braid, squeaking under the tension. “What do I do?”

“Evacuate the train.”

“On it,” Bell answered, wrapping the braid around Treeka’s pot to fetch her. Then she made off toward the lounge with Rita.

Theora stared at the landscape of billowing smoke and destruction. She’d bought a ticket, without putting in due diligence of what exactly she would pay with. Thus, she was complicit.

There were two ways to make up for it.

First, she would destroy the Campanella. 

Not in revenge, but to prevent it from wreaking further havoc, and to protect the places it would otherwise feed on in the future.

She felt her feet tap along the metal plating, gaze wandering across the room as she passed it. The furnace and engine were built into the back of the lower floor of the locomotive. She entered the control room and took a seat at the conductor’s cabin. 

Above all, Theora was vexed with herself because she felt like she should have been able to piece the puzzle together earlier. She’d suspected the existence of a system of exploitation upon boarding; the way the staff had carried themselves, the asymmetry of information, the need to buy a ticket. She’d let the staff off easy as suspects early on because she’d had no clear evidence pointing to them. Instead, Theora should have been scrutinising them more than anything, because more than anyone, they had the capacity for a motive. But she’d let herself get lulled into this wondrous place in the hope that she was wrong.

Theora let out a sigh. Complacency was not a trait she liked observing in herself. It was a mistake she would need to stop making. Perhaps, once they returned home, she should have a talk with Isobel — maybe it was time to break their System too. 

Lost in her thoughts, Theora entered a strange calm. She absently heard people talk as they passed by to leave the train.

“I guess that’s it for this train, huh?” Montaparte asked, having found her way to Theora’s side. “Know how you will do this?”

“Making up my mind,” Theora responded.

“This is not your fault,” Montaparte said. “Maybe mine; I’ve been here for a long time. But not yours.”

Theora turned her head to look at her, and gave a smile. “You might be right. But truth be told — whose fault it is does not matter. It matters who can stop it.”

“I’ll be a little sad,” Theora heard Omi’s voice. “Because I did get used to this place… but like, not like I don’t understand. Not saying you can’t! Just being sad.”

Theora nodded. “It is sad.”

“I kinda don’t wanna leave the train… it’s selfish, but I have a bad feeling about it…”

“We will keep you safe,” Bell promised.

“I feel selfish too. Despite it all, I can’t bring myself to regret coming here. Because otherwise… I wouldn’t have met you two, and I still wouldn’t know where my weakness is.” Poxie sighed. “But I wonder why Qyy and I had to pay for a ticket, but Treeka didn’t. We are made out of wood too?”

Entrichia said: “The logic went like… you two are made out of processed wood. You are not made out of fuel.”

“That really is awful,” Treeka let out. “Awful.”

“I guess the train couldn’t go far enough to help me meet my friend…”

“G’mina,” Ulber’s baritone resounded, “I need to talk to you about something. Can you still walk? Want me to pick you up?”

“Careful with that piece of equipment. I’ll need it to wake Rita up.”

“Is she going to be okay out there? I really appreciate all you have done for her, but she really needs to get to an actual hospital soon…”

“I think she’ll be okay, yes. We have some capable healers at home too. And None said our reality has a fairly low Verisimilitude in comparison to most places. That’s why magic is so abundant for us, compared to a lot of other worlds. So pretty much everyone should be fine; nobody here really seems impossible where I come from. But I’ll start working on a Verisimilitude-Barrier Skill as soon as I can, just to be safe.”

“Bun Bun?” Dema asked after a while — Theora had no idea when she’d gotten here.

“Yes?”

“You okay?”

Theora shrugged. “I will be. You?”

“Bummed out. Not gonna praise the train anymore now… But I got your stuff.” Dema put the interdimensional travelling attire onto the conductor’s board.

Theora fetched her hand and squeezed it.

“Gonna need help?”

Theora shook her head. “Better if only I’m here, I have no idea what exactly will happen.”

“Yeah… I’m gonna stay with the others to make sure they’re safe! Got the luggage and everything so…”

Theora gave Dema a kiss before she left.

She didn’t know how Bell had convinced people to evacuate, what kind of arguments she’d brought forth or if she had used force with some. She wasn’t even sure how long it had taken. More people may have talked to her, but she wasn’t sure. Either way, Theora now found herself the sole remaining presence on the Campanella; the others were tucked into the bubble of Reality formed in Himaeya by the Lavish — at Treeka’s old home, where they’d first met.

Theora had promised Isobel to never use [Obliterate] again.

The train was still eagerly clamping new trails in front of itself, was still travelling steadfast ahead into the endless calm lake under puffy clouds in an azure sunless sky. Theora stood from the conductor’s seat, but didn’t leave the spot. Omi was probably right; even with what Theora was about to do, this likely wasn’t over. For a while, she gazed at the rhythmic clattering of the trails, an endless motion she could watch forever.

But she wouldn’t. 

And so, relative to the outside of the Campanella, Theora made herself immovable.

The furnace crashed into her with the weight of a world. Then the engine exploded in a beam of impossibly bright light. Theora wouldn’t give way, so the train bent and stretched past her, colourful glitters of the rainbow sinewing outward. They formed wide thin circles, like long strips of bark peeled from willow branches.

Gravity then ceased to function. The calm lake underneath the Campanella broke bubbles, as did the metal of the train, molten by the friction against Theora’s unyielding body. Where iron and water met, they exploded — a bright chain reaction popping through the sky like fireworks. 

When the train had fully split itself apart against her, Theora began breaking off the cooling parts of metal seared across her body, sending them away into the weightless abyss. And an abyss it now was. Ahead of Theora were the threads of the Campanella, an enormous landscape of orange and teal, a long trail like rollercoaster tracks of bubbling rind flaying outward. At her feet, the lake mixed with air like oil poured in water.

And behind everything, the sky fractured, opening holes to gaze through into thick purple miasma. That which the train had protected them from through the creation of its own reality was slowly spilling in. No more Verisimilitude. This place was no longer encapsulated.

Based on Theora’s understanding of the web of a situation they’d found themselves in, that could spell a modicum of trouble. Better to rejoin with the others.

But before that, she fetched the SCISSoRs from her interdimensional attire, and made a quick cut. This was a different reality, and it was falling apart. A good moment to try to make the necessary incision. This wasn’t the way she’d envisioned attaining the Fragment from this journey, but it was the end of the line.

She made a cut through the outer layer of a passing bulb of molten metal, and reached inside the hot mess. It took a while of searching, a bit of wanting. But eventually, her fingers closed shut around the fourth Fragment of Time. She stored it away gently, then gazed over to her left.

The destruction of the Lavish had caused realities to merge. A tall, sloped barrier, possibly the height of Fentanyle in her full shape, separated the world the Campanella had built from Himaeya’s razed forest. Theora could feel the presence of the others behind it. Bell had managed to seal them off. They stood, sat, and lay gathered at the fringe, on the other side of the window between worlds. Theora pushed gleaming debris apart; used it as propulsion to launch herself in their direction. She could no longer breathe, and it was too hot in here for anyone to survive. 

Bell stood on the other side, glowing in bright bioluminescence, her tendrils reaching far through the air. And yet, her feat of closing off this terrible space seemed effortless. 

She created a smaller barrier attached to the large one like a bubble, on Theora’s side. A small acclimatisation chamber? Theora entered it, and was soon funneled through to the others. 

She took a deep breath. It smelled of burnt wood and toxicity.

“I think the train is beyond repair,” Theora said. “It looks like that reality is collapsing. Is the Lavish, too? I have a feeling we might soon become otherwise occupied, though.”

She looked back at the large window showing the remains of the frayed train. An impossibly large portal to another world, just calmly sitting amidst an ocean of stumps and slowly clearing smog — all that was left of the once towering forest.

Dema gave her a hug. “Otherwise occupied?” she asked. “What do you mean, Bun Bun?”

Theora didn’t really want to answer, out of worry that it might manifest her suspicion.

“We’re still in the Lavish, right?” she asked instead. At least, what remained of it. “Will we be able to enter Himaeya properly from here, or do we need to get creative?”

“The energy supply was cut off,” Raquina said, appearing at Theora’s side. Her voice sounded distraught, guarded, but she pushed herself to keep talking. “That means the bubble preventing entry and exit will slowly fall apart, as will the world the Campanella created inside the miasma. We should be able to leave once everything dissipates.”

“How long until then?”

Raquina folded her arms in front of her red dress, contemplating. “I’m not sure. It’s not like we have any hands-on experience with that. I suspect it might be related to the rate at which the train uses energy to replenish its reality. That, and the total amount of energy required… maybe I can coax the caretaker to spit out the number.”

Theora took a glance around — everyone was here, including Rita, in her bed, surrounded by a plethora of medical devices, being tended to by Dr. Alp, who looked furious.

“I told him what poison we used,” Raquina said, in a low voice. “It was of a magical nature, designed so it shouldn’t leave any long-term damage. We coated her blankets in it, but once the source is removed and the rest of it metabolised, she should wake back up.”

“Ah,” Theora let out suddenly when she noticed the faint presence. “I think we ran out of time already.” She glanced over at Bell. “How are you holding up? Do you think you can protect everyone?”

“From what?” Bell asked, worrying at her lips. “Theora. This field is preventing nothingness from crashing down on us, and if you’ll notice, it happens to plug a pretty large hole. Don’t expect too much of—” She halted, suddenly turning around and gazing into the sky opposite the large hole in reality. “You mean protect us from that.”

“Dema,” Theora started, voice level. “I can’t use [Obliterate]. Do you think you might be ready to fight?”

“Sure, why not,” Dema chirped and immediately started bleeding from her fingertips.

Omi joined them when she heard their voices grow steelier. “What’s going on?”

She hid behind Theora.

“I don’t know,” Bell admitted. “But I can feel that something bad is about to happen.”

The moment she said that, the air high up above them fractured. A second crack immediately followed, tearing a rift through the sky like broken glass. The splinters grew in a circular path far around them, as if they’d been sitting in a dome. Something was breaking through the protective shell of the Lavish.

First, little black dots slipped through. A few pioneers before the swarm. They flapped outward, conquering the world.

Crows.

Gigantic plumed fingertips clawed their way through the first weakened spot, then the second. Two hands split apart the heavens from the outside, peeling away shards of clouds and blue. Then, with an enormous thunderclap, the sky broke between the two entry points, and Fentanyle’s gargantuan face emerged from nowhere.

She opened her eyelids to stare, and it was clear that she was only seeing Omi.

Her voice boomed.

“FOUND YOU.”