Chapter 217. The Lost Quadrant (Patreon)

Maria and I step through the rift and find ourselves in a sleek, dark cityscape. Towering buildings form a barricade of black glass and metal, but many look like they’ve been damaged by extreme weather.

The three of us stand on what appears to be a main thoroughfare, with with lines on the ground demarcating the flow of pedestrian traffic. There’s a rail that splits the road in two, similar to that I’d expect to see on a hovergloss line; still attached to it is a single square car slanting at an odd angle, the rail sagging around it.

My eyes trace the path of the rail to the end of the street, where it makes a sloping curve upward, into the sky. Looking up, I recoil in surprise. Asphalt city blocks hover far overhead, buildings extending from them porcupine quills. How such a thing could be physically possible is incomprehensible.

This is the lost quadrant–even in Eternity, it’s known for being bizarre and treacherous, full of unstable pockets of time and space.

Karanos leans slightly forward, his legs tensing. Before he leaps, he says, “Why am I only accompanying you this first time, and none after?” He glances back at us, then leaps forward. He grows rapidly smaller as he approaches one of the floating platforms above.

I nod to Maria and the two of us kick off the ground in pursuit. Kicking isn’t really necessary–my ascendant energy doesn’t work the way Maria’s does. While her energy envelops and empowers her body, mine improves my ability to penetrate defenses. It’s what allows me to hurt Karanos with decemancy. Instead I use my practice to fling myself forward

Still, kicking off the ground is satisfying.

When we reach the suspended chunk of city, Karanos is sitting in an abandoned office, his hands resting on top of a wooden desk. The building’s glass wall windows are shattered, but the interior of the building looks pristine, untouched by living organisms or weather.

“You’re only escorting us this first time because...” Maria trails off, her brow furrowing in thought. “Eternity rewards people who pursue daunting goals,” Maria replies. “What Eternity would provide to you is not necessarily what it would provide to us–your presence will interfere in our seeking.”

“That’s the largest part of it,” Karanos confirms. “But there’s another reason.”

“You don’t want us to rely on you,” I reply.

Karanos nods. “Even if I step back and let you and Maria lead, the end result won’t be the same as if you came alone. Moreover, coming by yourselves is significantly more challenging...”

“And Eternity rewards the bold,” I say, finishing his words.

While Karanos’ face remains stoic, I detect the smallest upward curl of his lips. “So it does.” He fixes his attention on the office building. “Have you two noticed what makes this place so intriguing?”

I pick up a potted plant from a nearby cubicle. The plant is completely healthy, its vitality white, though the soil it’s potted in is bone dry.

“‘The world is in a sort of stasis,” I reason. “What is alive stays alive, what is dead stays dead. The air is still. There’s no movement. The only living things I sense are plants.” There aren’t that many of them, though.

“What happened to the people who built this place?” Maria asks.

Karanos unfolds his hands and stands up, then gestures for us to follow again. This time he waits for us to travel together, leading the way up, following the straight lines of the skyscrapers. Eventually we’re just flying up into bleak gray-blue.

Our escort suddenly rears his arm back, then punches out. The sky crumbles, revealing a desert wasteland. Karanos steps through the tear in reality, Maria and I joining him a moment later.

When I step into the desert, the breath catches in my throat. The plane we came from is still clearly visible, a vertical barrier of glass cutting off the sand. I fly back to gain more perspective. From the city side, the desert is invisible, incorporeal; but from the desert, the city is like a snow globe, captured in a sphere of clear glass, motionless and surreal. I can see the platforms of buildings and even the one massive stretch of city where we first entered.

And that’s it–I can see where the city ends, the glass curving up, closing it in.

Maria’s face is expressionless as she addresses Karanos. “What would have happened if we kept going?”

“The boundaries are only half-real,” Karanos explains. “It’s not uncommon to see different behaviors between different planes like this. For some, if you go off the supposed edge, you’ll end up back on the opposite side, almost like you’re wrapping around the map. That’s not how the city works, though. If you go too far, you’ll run off the edge and die.”

“How?”

“I’d ask you to try it yourself, except for the fact that you’d lose all your non-persistent items.”

Suncloud’s jacket and the clothing ring are both persistent, but my other storage rings and clothing are not. If I died in an unrecoverable location–such as in a pit of lava–I would lose them.

Maria blanches. “How can we prepare against something like that?”

Karanos reveals a sadistic smile. “You have to feel it. The veil can be felt even when it can’t be seen, can be torn even when it isn’t weak. This is one of the reasons why I brought us to the eastern gate–this is the first connecting plane, and it’s one of the most dangerous for the unwary. We’re going to return and the two of you are going to try and sense the edge of the veil.”

He holds out his hand. “First, you’re going to give me anything you don’t want to lose.” He smirks. “Can you imagine what Suncloud would say if you lost her artifact in the lost quadrant?”

Frowning, I remove my rings and place them on his palm. The pants I’m wearing are persistent, having come with the jacket, so there’s no need for me to disrobe. Maria, on the other hand...

She withdraws her metallic void locket from under her robes and drapes the diamond-shaped enclosure in Karanos’ hand. Looking at Karanos, she says, “Am I supposed to just strip, then? I don’t have persistent clothes.”

Karanos gives her a probing look. “Didn’t Suncloud give you something?”

“...Why do you ask?”

He points above his head with a quizzical expression.

You know what he’s asking about, I state over our bond. Though I’m not sure why he’s bringing it up now.

Maria sighs. “Suncloud gave me a diadem that changes how others perceive me.”

“Have you tried it yet?” Karanos asks.

“Just with people back home,” she murmurs.

“Put it on now.”

She frowns, but acquiesces and reclaims her void storage. Unlocking it with a touch, Maria withdraws a blue diadem and flicks it into place above her head. A change washes over her, like someone flipped a switch. Her face becomes less pale, more flesh-like, and her chest begins to rise and fall naturally. What’s incredible is that even her vitality changes somewhat. There’s a thin veneer of white vitality over all the black. It wouldn’t fool any Life or Death practitioner, but it does add a vivacious quality to her appearance. I can see it in her enlivened cheeks. And her eyes–no longer an eerie electric blue, but a honeyed brown.

She looks like herself, before I ruined her. I flinch when confronted by the sharp contrast.

Over our connection I sense her embarrassment, though she hides it well. Hand on a hip, she addresses Karanos: “Satisfied?”

“Yes. Now, take off your clothes.”

Her expression is priceless, caught somewhere between polite and incensed, her eyes bulging slightly in spite of her clean smile. “Let me guess, this”–she points to the diadem–“will make it look like I’m wearing something?”

Karanos’ face reverts to its usual stoicism. “No, I’m just looking for a show.” When Maria and I fail to laugh, he rolls his eyes. “Obviously it’ll do something. If I’m not mistaken, it doesn’t just change how you look, but how you feel. If the diadem thinks you should breathe, you literally will breathe, just like a person, your chest rising in and out. Whether your chest actually physically moves is unimportant. If every sense is touched by an illusion, doesn’t the illusion become real, or at least real-adjacent? It’s a powerful principle.”

Without further protestations, Maria pulls off her pants. As the skin-tight armor material peels from her skin, an elegant flowing skirt manifests over her thighs, draping to just above her knees. Her hands freeze.

“This is bizarre,” she mutters, running her hand over the material.. “I can see and feel this dress, but I know it isn’t real. That knowledge doesn’t break the illusion at all.” Less reluctant, Maria tugs off her padded combat shirt, unzipping the cowl and releasing two straps with trained efficiency. The skirt extends into a sleeved dress that extends to her elbows, leaving her forearms bare. Peering down, she lifts up the skirt to reveal a pair of black bike shorts.

“That’s incredible,” I exclaim. I have to put on my clothes, damn it–Maria’s just appear on her body! It’s the peak of convenience.

“It is more impressive than I originally thought,” Maria admits, scrutinizing Karanos. “You told Suncloud to give me this. Was it because you already planned to have us visit this place and knew I’d need some sort of persistent vestments?”

“I’m giving back what I took away,” he replies curtly. “The clothing is just a bundled perk.”

I don’t like wearing this ring, Maria says. It makes it that much harder to accept what’s happened to me and move on.

But if you have the ring...why do you need to accept it? I retort mentally.

She sighs and returns her void storage to Karanos again. “Shouldn’t we get going? TIme is of the essence.”

“So it is,” he murmurs. “One of you break the veil.”

Maria snaps, her leg smashing into the glassy barrier, red energy swirling like a whirlpool. There’s only a single crack where her foot made impact, but she’s unperturbed and immediately follows up with another strike. Several strikes later, the barrier is chipped and dented, but it’s already healing itself back to normal.

“Dunai, what is she doing wrong?”

Y’jeni, I hate when he asks participation questions. And I don’t even have Crystal here to back me up. “The energy–it was all over her foot. There was a lot of it, but it wasn’t focused.”

Maria turns off to the side, her chest heaving. Cayeun’s circlet shouldn’t be able to make her dependent on oxygen, but it gives character to Maria’s typically hidden exhaustion.

Karanos raises an eyebrow. “Remarkably correct. Your turn, then. Remember what I showed you before–concentrate the energy down to a single point if possible. I sometimes think of it like charging a laser.”

I step up to the barrier and hold up my index finger. While Karanos punched the barrier to break it, the key shouldn’t be hitting the veil hard, but tearing it with overwhelming energy. But that’s easier said than done. When I call the energy to my hand, it naturally forms into tendrils that lap flame-like at my skin.

“Here’s a small tip,” Karanos adds. “How did you fend off Suncloud when she intruded upon your mind?”

“With a symbol,” I reply. The weave.

“Didn’t you also use ascendant energy?”

“...Yeah.”

“Try that, but on your finger, rather than your head.”

I nod slowly. Defending myself against Cayeun was a bit of a miracle in the first place, not one I’m confident in repeating. Reinforcing my mind with ascendant energy felt uncanny, uncomfortable. It didn’t come naturally.

But I suppose...I can give it a try. First things first, I’m going to try and reproduce what I did before. I close my eyes and focus on the vitality coursing through my body. I trace the constellation of my ethereal body to the base of my skull and up into my brain where the optic nerves connect.

I envision the weave of fate and try to remember the breakthrough I had back with Cayeun. She asked me to reinforce my defensive image with ascendant energy. For her, this reinforcement looked like wrapping the tapestry filaments with chains of ascendant energy. But that didn’t work for me, and I realized that rather than chaining things down, restricting and controlling possibilities...my energy much more embodies the principle of chaos, of flowing and changing. Transformation. Life to death, dust to dust...the cycle of samsara.

I hold that thought in my head and shut everything out. I feel something subtle, though it’s not concentrated in my head–it’s all throughout my ethereal body, a slight tingling, like the flame of desire. I have no idea how to localize the tingling. You can’t just grab fire and force it down to a single point. Fire is formless and fluid, just energy and smoke. How do you put fire on top of fire?

Even if I can’t condense the energy down, I still feel it more acutely than before. It’s an internal form of energy, coursing through the nodes of my ethereal body, and consequently dancing around the veins and arteries along which my ethereal body anchors.

The energy is naturally concentrated around node points–dissociated shards of my soul.

If I can just move a piece of soul into my fingertip...the charged ethereal will move with it. It might be enough.

I’ve never tried to move a shard of my soul before and quickly learn why. It’s excruciating. I stop and reconsider the necessity of such an action. I can deal with pain, but only if it’s necessary. All I need is to try hitting the barrier with a pinpoint of ethereal energy. Nobody said that energy needed to come from my index finger.

There’s a shard of my soul right between my eyes at the front of my skull.

What could go wrong, headbutting a piece of the veil so thick it’s literally visible as a glass barrier?

Before I can talk myself down, I smash my head forward. I feel my nose break and I my head bounces to the side, the action ineffectual.

Maria gasps. “What are you doing?”

I staunch the blood pooling in my nose with my practice. My head hurts, but I can tell I don’t have a concussion.

Yet.

I stare at the wall with a dubious expression, then take in a deep breath. Second time’s the charm. The timing wasn’t right on the first go, but I think my idea still has merit. At least Karanos isn’t telling me off, though it’s possible he just has no idea what I’m doing and is happy to let me fail before helping me to succeed. I can’t tell what he’s thinking–he has the guise of a golem.

I focus on the feeling of ascendent energy fizzing throughout my soul. When the fizzing roils to a burning boil, I bash my head against the wall. A solid crack sounds out. For a second I wonder if I’ve broken my skull. My eyes are wide as an indent bigger than my head is missing in the barrier. Still not big enough to go through, but it’s major progress.

Turning to Karanos, I cock my head. “Was that better?”

“You did just come up with that now, correct?”

I nod.

“Hmm. Well, you better start thinking about how you’re going to teach that to Maria.” In a flash he’s in front of me. He flicks the wall before it fully closes up and the veil glass splinters out for several feet, shattering into a tall doorway. “Come along, we have a long couple of days ahead of us.”

[ thanks for reading guys and another awesome month!

full honesty, i don't think it's going to be possible for me to finish the missing chapter tomorrow by end of month (i missed a chapter because i was very ill a few weeks ago). i'm in europe now on vacation and jet lag be kinda destroying me. i have like 6hr+ of schoolwork due tomorrow that is going to ruin my halloween, that's part-time grad school for ya lol. thank you for your understanding!

in other news, i'm planning to offer at least one more additional tier for the month of november -- a signed book copy tier! this means that i would figure out who is interested in signed book copies, order the books in one large shipment, sign the books, and then ship them back out individually to people's addresses. i'm trying to decide right now if i should have separate tiers for domestic vs international people and kindly ask people to pick which tier applies to them (because shipping costs for domestic/international are a few dollars difference), or if i should just have one tier for everyone for simplicity.

for consideration, i am currently only able to order advanced copies of the paperback -- i will also be selling hard covers of the book, but i can only produce these once the book goes live on nov 23rd. i could technically add a second tier for signed hard covers, but people would receive their books in early december at earliest if i offered that as an option. i might run a poll tomorrow asking for people's opinions.

for the umpteenth time, thanks everyone for the support! this series is my baby and you all made me believe it was possible/worth it to publish it professionally (and even found my own publishing company along the way). <3 <3 <3 <3 fyi, i credit my patrons in the acknowledgments! ]