Chapter Text
Prologue
Billions of years ago, when the Universe we live in wasn't even thought of, there existed a smaller reality in its place. A universe way tinier than the galaxies of today, with ten million suns to its name, it still managed to give birth to a civilization of sentient beings. Beings who brought their home world to global amity and concordance. Beings who harnessed the power of a thousand suns. Beings who lived all across the universe on millions of terraformed planets.
These beings called themselves the Archons, and their home universe — the Cosmos.
Harvesting all information they could in their small world, it was only a matter of time before multiple Archons started breaking their mind out of the fabric of reality. They became aware of their existence within a vast extradimensional ocean between worlds, which they named the Metacosmos - and also of strange ways that Metacosmos can interact with their, and presumably any, universe. This alien, esoteric realm was governed not by matter and energy, but by information, reflecting and refracting activity of a sentient mind - thoughts and ideas, dreams and fantasies.
Ones managed to create pocket dimensions there which they could customize laws of physics within. Others created computers in the Metacosmos that knew no concepts of time and space, instantly breezing through any algorithm unless stuck in an infinite loop. Some tried to break through the deep Metacosmos to the other natural universes, creating what will be called the Realm Door. And a group of Archons used the Metacosmos to construct a time machine, and after using it, went dead silent.
An Archon claiming to be one of them popped up years later. They went from planet to planet, talking about some person that went by the name of «God» and how their actions would presumably shatter the Cosmos into pieces. Though traveler's words were taken with many grains of salt, officials still began discussing the topic and eventually approved a program of creating dimensions for evacuation in case of any apocalyptic scenario - on each city, planetary, and star system level.
The years went by, though, and nothing of notice happened to the whole of Cosmos. The first years' panic calmed down, never even spreading far beyond the traveler's home cluster. And even if the officials had the terminal date on hand, it was never disclosed publically for obvious reasons. Thus, over time the story of God fainted away, becoming just a city legend, and the escape dimensions were never used — but still stood there as a brick in the foundation of any Archon's belief in a bright future.
Meanwhile, other time travelers also went on with their lives, cutting all ends to their past — and to one another. With one exception, though. Two of these Archons, named Komi and Naia, who knew each other from early childhood, decided to pursue their journey through life together. They eventually settled down on a planet named Hena'an in the Lua system and started a farm together - to sustain their living in an old-style way. They've had two kids, one in two years before the other, and named them Tayne and Caithe.
I
Tayne laid in her bed, mindlessly staring at the clock on the opposite wall. Single ticks merely resonated with her heartbeat while she desperately tried to breathe like normal. It wasn't going well at all.
After several minutes passed, it began to rain outside. Tayne took a deep listen to the sound, slowly calming down. She should probably get some extra sleep before breakfast…
"Hey, you alright up there?"
Tayne stretched and looked down over the edge of her upper bunk. Surely enough, her sister was awake, as she probably was for the whole night writing her stories. A rectangle of dim light sat near her, leaking through covers.
"It's just a nightmare," – she whispered, leaning back.
"Hey, it's not the first time I hear you like that. Wanna talk?"
"Wanna sleep!" – Tayne fell on her pillow and cuddled under the covers.
The same images haunted her for the third night in a row. Alien-looking, yet humanoid creatures, looking up to the sky in terror. Blasts of red, a dark silhouette of a cloaked person, flashing rainbow-colored lights. And what felt like millions of screams all pressed in one instant… This was one hell of a messy dream that she always woke up from in cold sweat. It returned from time to time, but three nights in a row was unusual… and too much.
When Lua had finally risen in the sky, Tayne was already back asleep. She woke up deep into late morning, far beyond breakfast, grabbed a few snacks, and stepped outside. Caithe sat right there, weeding the flowers while the soil was still wet.
"Morning, sis!" – she smiled. Tayne took a deep breath.
"Where do you get your energy from is beyond my understanding."
"From Lua, of course!" – Caithe winked. – "Hey, I was sleeping. Just woke up for a couple of hours to write an idea down. And how's your night?"
"I'd rather forget about it," – Tayne turned back and went to the water collector to brush her teeth.
A jingle interrupted her midway, though, coming from her knee. She detached her scrollphone from there and unrolled it, revealing the flat surface of pure light. A hologram of an Archon appeared from it, growing in size until landing on the ground. Naia.
"Mom, couldn't you find another entrypoint?…" – Tayne started to complain but was quickly interrupted:
"Tayne, Caithe, this is serious and we need to act fast," – Caithe caught attention from across the garden bed, looking surprised. – "An unknown cosmic object approaches, we should evacuate," – Naia took a second of silence. – "Wish this was a joke."
Archons lived in a world that knew no enemy, external or internal. They studied their universe down to the last asteroid and were masters at scanning space. Thus anything alien was never expected and never accounted for, left only in fantasy books alongside magic. Not even in far realms deep in the Metacosmos have Archons found other signs of any, let alone sentient, life. Until this day.
Tayne whispered something unholy and ran back to the bedroom to grab a few things, most importantly a backpack she never fully unloaded. Caithe was with her, furiously looking for her music and graphic scrolls as well as a paper notebook, and in two minutes they jogged towards the village center. Naia hovered behind, carrying a gigantic bag full of seeds and Lua knows what else afloat. In another five minutes, the village became completely devoid of sentient life - one after another, everybody left through the village's wormhole tower.
And in another three and a half minutes, a fifty-meter-long cruciformed ship descended from the sky. Spitting out jets of steam with ungodly roars, it slowed down and eventually stopped, hovering just above Naia and Komi's house.
It emitted five long, powerful pulses of high-frequency electromagnetic noise in a futile attempt to shut down anything there was to spy. After that, a mechanical creature dropped out of its bottom hatch, landing on all six paws right into one of the garden beds. A small humanoid in a top hat dismounted from its spine and sniffed the air.
"Sir, is this where the Creatress resides?" – groaned the creature in clear Archon language.
"It should be," – said the top-hat person. – "However, I don't feel anyone around here. What about you?"
"I feel... something. People were here recently, but already left."
"Good for them," - laughed the top-hat person. - "Shall we eradicate the place?"
The creature nodded, the top-hat person raised one hand to the sky - and a missile was shot from a ship, blasting the whole house in a million pieces.
II
A group of twenty village folk entered a vast, industrial hall, lit up by a multitude of floating glowing spheres. Walls of large, sandstone-coloured brick ascended endlessly to the pure darkness that hid the ceiling, and the air within was filled with subtle odor of machine oil. It could have probably been an empty storage facility near a couple thousand-years old cosmoport.
A hologram of an old Archon greeted the group as soon as a wormhole closed behind them. They went forward to show Archons to the «waiting hall», whatever that could be. Yet they ordered three specific Archons to stay near the wormhole and wait.
These three Archons were Naia and their children.
As Tayne understood nothing, anger slowly raised in her as she stood there waiting. She studied and poked the walls, then the wormhole frame – an arm-thick metal arch with intricate engravings atop of a round plate, not that different from any other she seen – and after that decided to text Komi – her other parent, if they knew anything on the matter. Komi volunteered part-time at the local town newspaper and probably was there.
Tayne grabbed her scrollphone, took a couple pictures of the place and was ready to send them to Komi, when she noticed one worrying thing.
The connection was absent.
Every planet in the Cosmos that supported life was fully geared out with an omnipresent, free to use wireless mobile network, connected to interstellar communication centers of the Cosmarium. Having none of that around meant Tayne ended up on an unsettled planet or in deep space.
Anxious, she opened up Cosmic Navigator… and it failed as well. Archons used natural pulsars as beacons for navigation, detecting their radiowave signals. Tayne's scrollphone caught nothing resembling that.
«No beacon heard…» on a pure black screen is what the application showed. As if the outside world ceased to exist in an instant… or, more plausibly, as if they were in a deep bunker under hunreds of meters of rock.
In a last effort to grasp what's happening Tayne reached to open the neutrino counter – but instead she caught a remote sound of someone's footsteps on metal and instantly got distracted. The sound was coming not from the other end of the hall where the civilians left to, but instead from beyond the walls – and after a bit more time a wall piece, indistinguishable from any other, slid forward and across, opening a gaping black aperture.
Why would anyone ever want a hidden door in a place already so hidden?
"I am terribly sorry for making you wait!" – there the person was. A middle-aged Archon, wearing a round hat and a black dress-hoodie up to the knees, stockings and a belt across the waist. Their thick, waist-long pale-white hair made Tayne a bit envious — she always wanted a hairstyle like that, yet her own hair were too weak and dropped out whenever reaching the shoulders.
The person seemed slightly familiar, Caithe looked at them with great admiration, Naia with a happy smile – and in a couple seconds Tayne remembered: she saw them on some photos in the family album, with her parents. An old colleague of theirs. What was their name again?…
"Yasimir!" – Naia interrupted, – "i'm glad to see you, but do you really have to bring my children into this?"
"Err…?" – Tayne chocked on a mix of various questions.
"Umm… Hello," – they scratched their head, – "so these are Tayne and Caithe, right?"
Naia facepalmed, giving the ceiling a look of despair.
"So long story short, i used to work with your parents decades ago, now i'm working in the research department," – Yasimir talked quite rapidly, Tayne was barely able to catch up, – "and speaking of, we just had a major national security breach possibly tied to your family via the Metacosmos…"
The Cosmos had no common government. Instead, in interplanetary management it majorly relied on artificial intelligence and decentralised networks of dedicated activists. The latter, called the departments, helped to mediate the planetary officials and administrate various tasks like transport or distribution of goods. The research department in particular was a scientific union dedicated to scientometrics and global research coordination. In the latest centuries it also picked up the duty of looking after the Metacosmos.
"How can it possibly be tied to us, let alone the kids?" – exclaimed Naia, – "Yasimir, why?"
"You'll understand once you see all the materials, we never had anything like that to happen!" – Yasimir exclaimed with passion. – "Would you three mind to follow me into my office? I need to show you some video material."
"Fine," – Naia emited an exhaling sound: due to them being a hologram they couldn't actually have exhaled. – "Can I at least explain the kids where we are?"
"It's not like this topic's a secret, you know."
Yasimir reopened the fake wall and led the group inside, to a narrow corridor with metal floor and pure black walls, that looked like they were openings to the void — yet when Tayne touched one, it felt solid and covered in velvet. Surprisingly, it wasn't dark, Tayne could clearly see the floor and other archons, yet no light source was in sight (apart from Naia's dimly glowing body) – light seemed to be propagating equally from all sides, leaving no shadows.
"When you were young, Komi told you tales about the Metacosmos, the space beyond our reality that we visited in dreams," – said Naia, – "and the realities within we tried to create… Yasimir was our pal back then, though they used a different name as a child, Yasmine — Komi probably mentioned that name. Yasmine doesn't go well with adult pronouns, so they reworked it…"
"Now it checks out!" – Caithe exclaimed, – "i remember!"
"We never were the only ones who tinkered with it. Metacosmos was a popular topic when I was young… Archons in the research department made serious science on it, and this place is a result. A place, one of many, that they managed to stabilize and visit in reality, linking it to the wormhole network. Departments use them for many things, but the name «escape dimensions» is to remind of the initial goal, which was to create a place easily accessible from anywhere to evacuate anything to in case of a major catastrophe. Which is, ironically, what happened now…"
"Speaking of," – asked Yasimir, – "have you ever contacted the Metacosmos yourself?"
"Caithe did like five times," — Tayne spat out, – "I tried, but never even managed to approach it."
"How peculiar… So how's your results, Caithe?"
"I feel like it doesn't like me much," – admitted Caithe. – "It only started accepting me around a year ago, and it never really opened to me. Sure, I have dreams about a colourful, whirling void, i was able to freely move, but not so much to weave anything as Komi advised, and it kicks me out every time… So i really don't think i could've damaged anything there…"
Yasimir suddenly stopped and pushed the black wall in a seemingly random spot, opening it.
"We're here."
"What a ridiculous floor plan you have," – Tayne noted sarcastically.
"That's not even a floor plan!" – exclaimed Yasimir. – "This is my creation, the dark path, it was in the news like… seven years ago!"
"Yasimir, the trend died," – Naia objected. – "Not that many people care about department's otherworldly inventions anymore."
And then the Archons entered the office.
III
There was a round, blissfully clean room with the ribbed, warm to touch metal floor, similar to one on the dark path. It was covered by a glass dome which served as a screen, a fake window, displaying the room floating in the evening sky above thick clouds. The illusion broke immediately, when Tayne noticed absence of any Sun in that sky – yet, also like on the dark path, light in the room still was bright and came from all directions, leaving no shadows. Light flavour of lavender filled the air here.
A long yet low darkwood table stood in the center, cluttered with all things from paper notes to holoscrolls, with a vintage mid-millenia laptop positioned in the middle. Pillows, armchairs and beanbags were scattered all around the table, and Yasimir quickly grabbed one of the armchairs, positioning themself behind the laptop.
"As you can see, Naia, we made significant progress in our research since you and Komi left," – Yasimir continued their fast-paced chatter. – "The dark path is just one of the inventions, though it was the one that I helped to create. Our lab creates dimensions at will with automated tools now, and we currently prioritize two goals: mapping the entire close Metacosmos and stress-testing the laws of its physics. And talking about the former, a while ago we discovered a new growing realm in a place previously empty – truly a unique occurance! – with trail data pointing towards the Lua system. Now, let me find one recording…"
Yasimir delved into their laptop; Tayne wandered around the room for a bit, touching the walls, before eventually plopping down on a beanbag; and Caithe settled on an armchair immediately. She looked incredibly inspired ever since she saw Yasimir, and now she utilised the break – unrolling her scrollphone to actively write something in.
"Terribly sorry!" – Yasimir finally stopped their clicking around, – "found it! Look, here's the map of the area!"
And in a click of a mouse the room fell into pure darkness. The only things left visible was Naia's dim body and Yasimir's face, lit up by the laptop screen. Yasimir made a couple more clicks, and the screen's light also went out – but instead other pictures began appearing around the room, that looked woven from silver moonlight. Yasimir stood up – now they were more or less visible.
"So, this is your star system in proportion," – Yasimir began, pointing at a ball of light hovering just above their laptop, representing Lua. – "Rendered thirteen standard days ago. There's Hena'an," – they waved their hand towards a tiny sparkling dot, that slowly approached Tayne's head. She turned towards it, following the movement as the planet passed in front of her eyes, accompanied by an even tinier moon – Feda'an. No detail were visible on either of those – the quality of this render had a limit.
"Now i'll turn on the Metacosmos," – said Yasimir and tapped a button.
An arrangement of red dots popped up all around Hena'an, following it; another red speck appeared inside Lua, shining through it. A larger amoeba-like formation also popped up, colored in hot orange and located near the end of Yasimir's table in the ecliptic plane.
Yasimir started waving their hands even more, pointing at one object after another. "These are the dimensions within the Metacosmos, the red ones are the escape dimensions, and this orange one is… an old experiment, let's say it like that – it has no relevance to the problem. The color depicts how far the dimension is from our universe, its depth in the Metacosmos."
"Like, in the fourth dimension?" – asked Tayne.
Yasimir smiled: quite a good approximation, actually. "There are more dimensions than four, but something along these lines, yes. That's a completely normal picture, it's," – they consulted the screen, – "yep, still standard day sixty one of this year, the interesting part happens a day later, let me just skip to it…"
They pulled some slider with a mouse, and Hena'an quickly jumped away from Tayne to somewere near Caithe. Then it continued to traverse space like normal. And then…
It was as if Hena'an spit out something. A dot, turning in a line, then in a branching fractal, then in a deformed amoeba, it arose above the ecliptic plane, changing colours from red to orange to yellow to lime green and growing, growing, growing… It slowly ascended to the ceiling, and then Yasimir sped up time – and in a single Hena'ans year (around ten standard days – Lua was a small star, and Hena'an orbited it closely) turned deep blue and spreaded several meters across, slowly coming to a halt both in growth and movement.
Caithe looked at this cosmic curiosity with terror.
"Something or someone managed to seed the Metacosmos with this… thing," – stated Yasimir, – "and don't be tricked with its relatively small size on screen. It's located extreemly deep, near the very limits of what we consider close Metacosmos, meaning way larger actual dimensions. This is a whole another universe, with asteroids, planets, stars, it's only ten times smaller in volume than the Cosmos itself, yet populated way more compactly. No Archon, no machine, not even our newest reality guns can create anything of this size. And to top it all off, it comes with sentient life."
"How advanced of a life?" – quickly asked Tayne.
Yasimir laughed. "Fortunately for us, not that advanced! They only hold around a thousand systems, around three hundred planets, usage of those being severely inefficient. Their technology is basically ancient, their data protection is laughable, and they aren't even politically united! Maybe could've competed with us in the tenth millenia, but certainly not now," - they paused for a second to catch breath, as they talked faster and faster in excitement. - "Yet there's a catch…"
Tayne interrupted. "You studied it all that quickly?"
"I said, their data protection's laughable," – Yasimir closed something on the laptop, and the render disappeared, giving back the way for the sunless sky. – "They have a primitive analogue of our Cosmarium, that we entirely downloaded in the first day, then it's just the matter of sorting it all automatically. All protocols were ready for if we found something like that with the Realm Door…"
Yasimir took a break to drink some water from the table. Tayne was so hooked up on the story, that she havent even noticed Caithe hiding her face in the palms mid-speech, whispering something in fear. Naia noticed, though, and reached to comfort her.
"So, about the catch," – Yasimir continued, – "even with their generally low development, they still surpass us in one specific field. The Metacosmos. And while we spied on them, they already knew about the Cosmos. On the fourth day of their existance, they sent a starship through the Metacosmos, that managed to almost entirely avoid our renderers and entered the Cosmos around six standard hours ago. While the department still discussed if we should initiate the first contact, the ship entered Hena'ans atmosphere, and then… well, then we evacuated you here."
"And what have they done next?" – quietly asked Caithe.
"Well," – Yasimir's voice dropped, – "they hit the village with a powerful EMP, then destroyed your house and carpet-bombed the garden, leaving the atmosphere and exiting the Cosmos shortly after," – Yasimir took a deep breath and went silent for a few seconds. – "My condolences."
Naia, who was silent throughout the whole conversation – they already knew the first part of it in vague detail – leaned back and closed their eyes. Their house… Well, the microbots will probably roughly restore it in a day from an old matrix, but it won't feel natural for Naia to live in there for a while. Weird, considering the nature of their own being as an assembly of microbots with digital consciousness, but still… And the garden, too… That hit the hardest, as the garden almost was the second self for them.
«What if i stayed in bed for an hour more?» – thought Tayne, and her heart missed a few beats.
"Why for stars' sake was it our house?!" – she exclaimed.
"We don't know, that's part of why I reached for you…" – started Yasimir, but quickly got interrupted:
"Do you have pictures of the ship? Can I look?" – Caithe sounded very quiet and more serious than ever.
Yasimir expected that question… though maybe not from Caithe. "We do," – they instantly opened a file and turned the laptop around.
Caithe got up and looked. Scrolled through a couple shots. And her face turned pale white.
Yasimir began realizing what truly happened. "You recognise it?"
Caithe silently went back to her beanbag and fell on it face down.
"Wait, you, like, really recognise it?" – Tayne also got up and looked at the ominous, dark metal cruciformed starship, shot from above, probably from some sort of a satellite. It hasn't triggred anything at first, as Tayne mentally scrolled through popular media on aliens and history of space travel…
But then she remembered a drawing that used to be put up in their room, on a wall behind the bed…
"This," – Caithe almost whispered and talked very slowly, – "is a Devastator. And not just any Devastator, but the Emperor's Wrath. The private battleship of the Watchdog and the Garbage Collector, social janitors for the High Emperor Yinlogon, who rules over the Starscape. And all these were characters in a book i'm writing. How…"
"Yeah, how?!" – exclaimed Tayne. – "Yasimir?!"
"Yasimir what?!" – they still seemed calm, but their voice started to crack with anger. – "It wasn't me who wrote the book! Naia, we talked to you about this…"
"And i talked to the kids about this," – Naia sounded just… broken, shocked with the sheer impossibility of the situation. – "I told the kids everything they wanted to know, and since Caithe cant even enter the Metacosmos for long enough, why should I have thought this to be a possible outcome with her current skill level?"
"I told you several times – its not about the skill level! The Metacosmos responds to our brainwaves, and it normally only does that when we consciously force it while asleep, since anything else is too noisy to have an influence, but Caithe and Tayne…"
And then reality shattered.
In a single instant, half the dome exploded into pieces, scattering glass all around, tearing beanbags and blowing paper off the table. Only Naia with their digital brain were barely fast enough to react to this – and they did, by throwing Caithe behind an armchair and covering Tayne with their own body. Shards bounced off their body, leaving no marks on the powerful forcefield. But Yasimir, being out of Naia's reach, withstood the hit of the deadly wave and slowly collapsed on the knees, hissing in pain.
Behind their back, where the glass exploded, a gaping hole was now opened to the whirling black mist of the outside – and a giant dark metal construction appeared from that mist. A wall of a starship, made from metal sheets welded together, covered in rivets, handrails, screws, hazy illuminators, it was sliding across at the speed of a train, yet gradually slowing down.
"Run…" – whispered Yasimir, but then realised – they have nowhere to run – got up through pain and reached for the laptop.
Without saying a word, Naia zoomed over there, grabbed the laptop, grabbed Yasimir and put them near the other half of the glass wall – covered in cracks, but still relatively stable.
"Open your damn path and we're out," – said Naia – and Yasimir reached the wall, drawing a line on it with a shaking hand, leaving a trail of blood on the glass.
Then Naia zoomed to the stunned kids still sitting on the floor, turned around – and saw the wall coming to a halt, with a three metre-diameter vault door that was already opening right against Yasimir's table. A symbol was engraved on that door, depicting two pentagrams overlayed on top of each other with a grinning skull in the center and words «Emperor's Wrath» written around in a circle.
And before Naia could do anything, a blast of what seemed like boiling white fire was spat out of the door, reducing Yasimir to a pile of ash and burnt bones. Naia could only hope they did their scanning recently.
Right after it came the second blast, directed at Naia – this one they sent back with a single hand movement.
"Stay back and get cover," – Naia spat out to kids, as their normally white body was turning deep red. – "I'll end these bastards."
The door seemed to be stuck half-open after being hit by a fire blast which Naia deflected, yet the wall still managed to pull a mechanical ramp from beneath it. And the first soldier who stepped on it – a person in a deep black armored suit with a windowed helmet and high boots – got decapitated the second they did so. So did the second and the third, and their heads and bodies slid down the ramp, stacking in a pile on the floor, all while Naia seemingly did nothing.
Holograms can't normally do that. But Naia was no ordinary hologram.
Nobody else was willing to come out, and Naia went to the offensive – still without taking a step forward. Screams of agony filled the space for a brief moment, as people on the other side were being torn apart with powerful forcefields.
"Two dozens," – Naia stated emotionlessly. – "I sense some more, will be back. If you need me, call on the scroll."
And so Naia charged through the door, entering the enemy fortress. They passed the entryway, hovering above the pond of blood, grabbing a flamethrower from one of the bodies on the way - and went further, accompanied by a thousand invisible, inflexible paper-thin forcefield blades. They really wanted to just cut the ship in ten thousand pieces right now — with the only thing stopping them being realisation they need the ship to return to the Cosmos.
Oh, and that this will probably exceed their energy limit.
IV
Tayne felt comptetely empty, forceless. After seeing all the bloodshed unfold in mere seconds, her mind couldn't catch up, digest and accept what happened and got… turned off, kind of. She sat on the floor amidst the shards and fluff from all the torn pillows, desperately trying to stay conscious and stare away from both the pile of beheaded bodies and the burnt remains.
"Tayne…" – Caithe spoke after what felt like minutes of silence. After getting no response, she moved closer, softly patting Tayne on the head.
"Sis, no need to. Really," – Tayne shook her head. – "Sorry."
"Sorry for what? If anybody should apologize, it's me…"
"And if anybody should be supportive, that's me. But i'm just…"
Caithe put her hand on Tayne's shoulder, and Tayne stopped her sentence. It was so weird how between the two of them Caithe, the younger one, was always the wiser one, the stronger one, a supportive figure. A person who Tayne looked up to despite being taller by a head's height. And even though Tayne had always been trying to catch up, take the guiding role in anything where it's up for grabbing, right now she was very glad for Caithe being around - as she was at all times, caring for her, consoling her and providing moral support when Tayne needed it.
"Do you think Naia can handle them?…" – Tayne asked. – "You know all enemy powers, right?…"
"Better than I do mom's," – said Caithe. – "The bulk of the crew should not be a threat, but there's around a dozen witches-technicians and the two ship owners. Mom would've probably got them all dry in the Starscape, but we're in the Dreamscape…"
Tayne heard these terms before… but after what just happened her mind was in such a jumble she couldn't recall from where. "The what?"
"The Metacosmos, I thought you know humans call it that?"
"Sorry…"
"Nevermind."
"So that dreamscape thing… Witchcraft takes power from it, right?" – Tayne remembered something.
"Sure does, but it also affects it stronger. And with the Watchdog and the Garbage Collector being high witches - they can massively shape raw Metacosmos, rewriting matter, physics laws, everything at will… Though these two are nothing at it compared to, say, the High Emperor."
Caithe took a moment to ponder.
"I would've told mom to stay away from the owners… but then again, have you ever seen them do this?" – Caithe waved towards the pile of soldier corpses, being surprisingly indifferent to their presence – "or go red like that? I think… I hope mom got them all in the bag."
"And will we be able to return from this… place? After…"
"Sure, the ship should be pretty easy to pilot, at least i imagined it to be. I'll show mom around. You just sit there with a cup of chakra and guide it through your imagination while technicians are doing the hard work… wait."
There could be no technicians left on board after Naia's rampage, realised Caithe.
But even before she could reach for the scrollphone, it started ringing by itself in advance. With hands slightly shaking, Caithe on second attempt extracted the scroll from a pocket, and when she finally unrolled it, Naia jumped out of the screen like a plug from a gaseous wine bottle.
"Caithe, quickly," – she said. – "There's a huge robot with four arms that breaks my blades like glass."
"The Watchdog… You can't hit him at all?"
Naia emitted a short puffing sound. "No. Can't even rip from inside, my bots disappear inside him. Any chance he got weaknesses?"
"He does!" – exclaimed Caithe. – "He's all electrical and mechanical on the inside, just fill him in with water! Or sand, or…"
"Nice," - said Naia sarcastically, "and where am i supposed to find these?"
"The ship has water pipes in the walls, it's how he got defeated in my own plot, when the technicians rioted! Just use your magic to break open the pipes and…"
And then the Watchdog appeared, breaking open the double pentagrammed door.
Six-legged and four-armed, the size of a car, with a dragon tail, a canine-looking head and four ears sticking out in all directions, the Watchdog was a mechanical bronze-coated beast, screeching with every movement. He had to duck down to exit the door even after ripping and throwing out the stuck part of it with one swoop of a paw. His three gigantic eyes, more resembling of car headlights, ominously glowed dark red. And his legs, ending with massive paws suited for a lion, were covered in blood up to the knees.
"You son of a witch…" – he roared in mechanical voice. Supposedly, to Naia.
"Caithe, your scroll, now," – commanded Naia. – "I have a plan."
And immediately the whole room was set into motion. The table, beanbags, chairs, glass shards all got picked up by Naia's powers and thrown towards the beast. The glass dome, or rather the remainder of it that was still in place, bended over and broke in a heap of long shards, all trying to penetrate Watchdog's joints, enter the mouth, swarm the eyes. The Watchdog reacted by transmuting it all to metal, that stuck to his body and got absorbed…
But that was just a distraction to save Naia some time.
Naia took Caithe's scroll, unrolled it and bit into the glowing screen, while simultaneously arising up in the air. The screen instantly got bright red, with dots of light constantly exiting the scroll binder and spreading across Naia's body — until Naia started to glow like a hundred lightbulbs, and the screen disappeared. Naia sucked up all the power that was in the battery, throwing the discharged scroll down – with Tayne catching it.
So when the Watchdog was finally done defeating the last of beanbags and looked up, he saw Naia, flickering with light too bright to look on, flying in midair waving hands — and for some reason they now also had four – in a jittery pattern, as if they pushed aroung a heavy object. And behind them, from what previously was an opening to the outside void…
"You're a high witch?" – he exclaimed, with terror and disbelief breaking right through the emotionless mechanical voice.
…a gigantic tsunami wave the whole height of the now-gone dome appeared, which had flown through Naia and around the kids, but hit the Watchdog like a heavy truck, submerging him, throwing him back to the starship and whirling around him in tact to Naia's motions, spinning and slamming him repeatedly into the starship wall. The witch screamed, groaned, screeched and gurgled so loud that kids had to block their ears – but eventually it stopped. Unable to safely transmute liquid which already got in his belly and unable to function with salty sea water hitting agaist the microchips, he switched off. Only for Naia to slash their hand through the air, chopping off the monstrous head, whose eyes were still flickering red, and instantly throwing it into the void – revealing the inside to be filled with cogs and sparkling rainbow-colored wires.
Water, returning to normal physics, instantly spilled out from the flat, now borderless platform, disappearing into the black abyss.
"I'm done," – Naia snapped out, returning to the ground. They lost almost all the glow and looked even dimmer and thinner than usual. – "I'm freaking done with this. Tayne, please give me your…"
And they disappeared. Only the motherdrone, a tiny metal sphere containing their mind, fell down, splashing in a puddle of water.
"Out of battery." – Tayne reached to the drone.
"Oh. Can you charge them from your scroll?"
"I'll try," – Tayne inserted the drone in a hole at the end of her scroll binder. – "Device found… device installed. Chute!"
"What happened?" – wondered Caithe.
"Seems to be a long process. Damn, what kind of trickery mom used to suck yours so fast?"
"They are apparently a high witch and you are surprised about that?"
"Caithe, witches aren't real…" – Tayne choked, — "I mean… it's all just complicated metaphysics and science and stuff…"
"Or as i like to call it in my book, witchcraft," – smiled Caithe. – "So, how long will they recharge for? We have one more witch to defeat…"
"We who?"
That smirky voice, speaking in Archon with a clear Rubean accent, belonged to one who could only be the Garbage Collector. A wrinkly old person in a dark brown cloak and a top-hat, with a fabulous gray moustache, who looked hilariously tiny compared to the Watchdog, only around a meter and a half high. The Collector had just floated out of the ship, levitating three meters above the ground.
"And they are…" – Tayne started.
"It's «he». And yes."
"Another robot?"
"A human," – Caithe pointed a finger at him. – "Looking for me, huh?"
"The Creatress herself…" – the Collector whispered menacingly. – "All the chaos you've caused, all the lives you have taken…"
"You really wrote that thing all edgy and ellipsis-y like that?" – Tayne backed away, desperately trying to activate something on the scroll. Caithe did the same, even though nothing really remained on the flat metal disk to hide behind.
"Damned stupid coders!" – Tayne's scroll suddenly exclaimed in Naia's voice. – "They've put a memory error checking protocol in here, why can't I skip it, whyyyy! Kids, can you hold up for just six sec…"
And then the scroll binder broke in half right in Tayne's hands. The Garbage Collector started to giggle in his screechy disgusting voice.
"What was that, a talking toy?" – he mumbled, still giggling. – "Or maybe," – and his voice instantly turned serious, – "that was a witch who slaughtered two hundred men on my ship? I saw everything. Don't you expect to not get revenge…"
The scroll pieces slid out of Tayne's hands like soap and immediately began disassembling, crumbling into dust. Tayne could've sworn she heard a short, heavily silenced, but recognisable scream. And then the Garbage Collector began to descend, slowly approaching Caithe.
"If you even remotely dare to touch my sister," – Tayne blocked his way and pulled out the only weapon she had — her fists, – "i swear, i'll find you across the whole Metacosmos and…"
"And cut," – interrupted the Garbage Collector. – "You're not even a witch, hon, you're a minor annoyance. I think i might sell you as an exotic slave given your origin, but…"
Tayne screamed with rage and dashed at the floating old man, yet got raised into the air herself halfway. Effortlessly swinging limbs in attempt to escape the pulling force, she got pulled right to the witch and frozen in the air, with a fist raised to punch him in the face — stopped last second by a force suppressing all movement.
"Minor annoyance…" – he poked her nose lightly with his rough knobby old-man finger, – "yet such a young and capable body… No, i won't sell you, such a remarkable piece of garbage should belong to my collection… How'd you like getting brainwashed?"
Tayne stared at the Collector with fury. This bloody damned thing crushed her mother to dust (could they be restored from some backup even? Tayne knew nothing about hologram transfer), was accountable for reducing her mom's friend to dust, and now wants her sister to serve for some dumbass emperor?!
"You've got some emotions, ma'girl," – the Collector continued to mumble, – "that's fine, living things tend to have these, but how about a little less, potentially, maybe…"
He tried to cast a little mind controlling. Just a little. Not his best field of witchcraft, not the worst. He was not expecting to hit a barrier, and one so tough he physically felt hit on the head. And at the same time, unsuspecting Tayne channelled all the push force she could into her raised fist. And finally broke through.
An old man screamed - and his scream was so loud and disgustingly high, that it probably would've shattered the glass dome if there was left any. Tayne unbended two fingers from the fist last second, striking the witch in the eyes — and thanks to her long nails, the effect was pretty painful.
"MY EYEEEEES!!! I'M BLIIIIIIND!!! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO RUN THE SHIIIP!!!" – this was the last thing Tayne heard before a powerful shockwave hit her, propelling her through the air at a ridiculous speed and tossing her over the ledge, into the misty abyss. The scream echoed quieter and quieter in the distance until ceasing completely. But by that time Tayne already fell unconscious.
There is no air in raw Metacosmos.
- End of Act 0 -