Chapter 203: Begone

CN: Verbal Abuse

“It’s time to have some fun,” Theora explained with a smug little smile. “You said finding out what happens when you underreport your sheet won’t help us with the investigation. But… what if Fentanyle somehow succeeded in using an undeclared ability? It’s suddenly very relevant, isn’t it?”

Bell buried her face in her hands. “You just want to do the impossible,” she complained with a muffled voice. “Fine, whatever. Gosh, I still feel the second-hand embarrassment in my bones from when you opposed the staffers like that. This is going to be so much worse, isn’t it?”

Bell’s reaction, albeit misguided, did make sense. After all, she had — both now and even before polyping — an intrinsic reluctance to go against authority. Even though she had plenty of ways to stand up against it. Theora would need to show her that, if one had the ability, this very act of standing up wasn’t just a privilege, but an obligation.

“The easiest way to do the impossible that I’ve found, is to first make myself immovable, and then twitch a little part of myself,” Theora explained. “Like a finger.”

“A-huh,” Bell hummed, looking like she’d rather be anywhere else.

“Or a toe,” Theora continued, thinking it over. “Or maybe…”

“I’m not sure it matters which body part you end up moving,” Bell offered, and Theora conceded the point.

“Fine. Let me get ready, then.”

Theora sat down cross-legged on the large blackstone brick, back straight, eyes resting on the entrance to the Lavish. She would have to be careful about this — she didn’t want to rip the train apart. The Lavish was a good place to start, because at least, if something went wrong, Theora wouldn’t crash into a passenger coach. Presumably.

Not that anything would go wrong. She’d been immovable on moving objects before; that part was fine. Doing the impossible was the entire point of the exercise.

And so, Theora breathed out slowly. She imagined her feet heavy and unmoving. Which, admittedly, was what they actually felt like a lot of the time — moving had gotten easier for her over these last few decades, sure, but her leaden body still carried a lethargy that was easy to remember and invoke. 

She just had to recollect that feeling of effort. Moving was effort. Standing, walking. She did it, sure, but it was a monumental obstacle to overcome every single time. Why wouldn’t it be? Despite what they looked like from the outside, even her feet were large. Her lower legs, her thighs — all of her a bedrock in spacetime despite its hollowness. Bedrock… that was a good way to imagine it, wasn’t it? Her legs as bedrock in a vast world, anchors. Theora extended the feeling up to her hip — and then felt the first small crack.

Reality around her fractured. Just the smallest of splinters, not even an atom in length. A soft pressure pushed against her, an angry one. Mechanisms shifted deep in the machine, cogs twitching, metal groaning against metal, a world thrumming against her immovable legs.

The legs would be enough, Theora figured. So she twitched her pinky toe.

A violent thunder rocked from underneath — too isolated to be perceived by ear or sight, but crashing gently against her impossible parts. An intention roared against Theora’s mind; not a real one, not one born of conscience, but extrapolated from the brimming of an ancient apparatus. Not real words, and yet, Theora could feel what it said.

BEGONE.

“No,” Theora answered, softly. She wasn’t done yet on this train; there were still mysteries to uncover before she’d agree to leave. She kept her refusal muted in its firmness — like an adult giving way gently as a child tackled them, but still not letting themself fall over. She wanted the train to last through its attempt.

“Theora,” Bell’s voice rang out urgently, “I don’t think—”

Suddenly, the door to the Lavish sprang open. Theora gazed upon the one who entered — old, with white hair, a beard, a uniform. The engine caretaker stormed in.

“What in the world is—”

He halted when his eyes fell upon Theora. “Ah,” she said.

“You again?!” he blared. “Oh, my lord. Haven’t we indulged your antics enough? Out with you,” he demanded, and when Theora didn’t budge, he repeated: “OUT!”

Bell had hidden behind the rock in a crouch, tendrils braided on her back to make herself smaller. Theora wasn’t going to involve her in this if she didn’t want to be involved, so she figured she’d have to answer to her crimes by herself.

Still, Theora needed clarification. Did he want her to exit the Lavish? “You are asking me to leave?”

“No, I’m not asking,” he snarled. “We’re past that damn point, you little shit. I’m kicking you out.”

“You’re kicking me out of the train?” Theora asked, curiosity in her voice.

“Yes! Bug off!”

Theora tilted her head. “… But I just made myself immovable.”

“You little—”

He was spitting all over the meadow, face beet red in anger as he gestured threats. It took him a few seconds to realise the threats were empty. The automatic defenses of the train had already tried to get rid of Theora — and failed, almost scrapping themselves in the process.

The caretaker let loose some additional insults, closing with, “Don’t you dare do that again!” and then stormed out.

Bell took a few minutes before she dared leaving her hiding spot again. “They’re getting pretty angry at you…”

“And for simply poking around, too,” Theora said. “It’s suspicious.”

“I mean, didn’t you almost destroy the train there?”

“That’s slightly exaggerated,” Theora claimed. “I was careful with it.” She felt for the atom-sized fracture on the fabric of reality and it seemed small enough. “And the only reason I did that was because they wouldn’t give me an answer to what would happen if I tried. Now that I know, they are angry. It’s for poking around. And that means we’re getting close.”

“To the solution of the mystery?”

“To the source of the imbalance.”

Theora was contemplating her next steps, only to realise she couldn’t currently take any steps in the first place. Then, suddenly, from deep within herself, she felt the world become superimposed for just a moment. A soft frizzle, as if she saw double for a moment, except her vision was unaffected. A soft “ah” escaped her throat. She turned to Bell. “Did you notice that?”

Bell tilted her head, the tips of her tendrils slanting along. “Notice what?”

The pressure from the machinery against Theora’s entire being eased. She frowned — Theora was no longer impossible. “The world just got amended.”

“Wait, what?” Bell looked around, probing the marble and the foliage as if she could feel the change there. Of course, the amendment ran slightly deeper than that.

“It’s just — the rules have changed,” Theora explained. “The engine caretaker must have adjusted the parameters now that he knows about something I left off my sheet.”

Now it was Bell’s turn to have a soft “ah” escape from her. “That means…”

Theora nodded. “The pieces might be starting to slot into place.” She rubbed her legs to wring the immovability out of them. “By the way, where’s Treeka…? She wasn’t with Omi… Is she with Dema?”

“I have no idea.”

Theora hopped down her perch. “I hope she wasn’t forgotten somewhere. Let’s go have a look.”

Just as they left the Lavish, they bumped into Raquina, who looked slightly stressed and hurried. “Theora,” she let out as she straightened her red dress. “I was sent by the caretaker—”

Bell looked incredibly unhappy to be seen with Theora just now, and walked two steps back to give them space. Theora gave Raquina a nod, waiting for her to continue.

“Look. You can— you can hold your experiments on the train, if you so choose,” she said, slowly. “But please, don’t do it in the Lavish. It’s a complex and fragile piece of ancient artificery. It’s made of many subcomponents — to read out memories to locate places that are currently unoccupied by other sapient beings, to connect to these places, to barrier off the space to prevent accidental entry and exit… and it has to keep several connections open at the same time. Even little disturbances can decommission the Lavish engine. Don’t mess with it.”

Theora frowned, tilting her head ever so slightly. If Raquina had told her this earlier, when Theora asked her questions, she would have readily believed all of this. But now…? The truth was, the Lavish had seemed fairly sturdy. Theora was fairly certain she had not done any actual harm, nor had she been close to. It was the equivalent of tapping gently against the floor of a room inside a castle.

She nodded anyway — she didn’t have to do anything like this again. Her curiosity was satisfied by the result. 

Raquina looked like a weight rescinded from her shoulders. She gave a strained smile, and after curtly expressing her thanks, she hurried back into the engine room.