Chapter 67: Insolvent (Patreon)

I’d like to have said that my alternate took my hand and pulled us both across the Blind Eternities to our destination without any fuss.

Of course, that would have been too easy.

The moment I reached out and took the other Taylor’s hand…everything shifted.

The world tilted on its axis, reorienting.

Gravity, inexorably twisted, towards a point of singularity.

We were being pulled together, into one space.

Back into one being.

I felt memories begin to bleed into my own, of people I’d never met, of places I’d never been.

Of a person I never was.

I had no mouth with which to scream.

And then I was being pulled back, away, straining to pull away.

The tether between us broke with an audible snap.

I doubled over, gasping as my form trembled and fizzled in and out of solid state before I managed to gather myself enough to reform into a physical shape.

Across from me, I saw that the other Taylor looked much the same, disheveled. There was a panicked look in her eyes that I imagined mirrored my own, until she brought her body back under conscious control.

All around us, the rest of the team looked on in surprise.

But none of them could have been more surprised than me.

“Um, so yeah,” my double said. “That’s kinda awkward.”

“Something like that,” I replied, straightening.

We shared a grimace, both of us brushing back tangled hair in an oddly similar gesture.

Off to the side, I saw Wally elbow robin. “Yo, I know that was freaky and all, but twins, Basil!”

“Hey,” Ritz said. “Get in line!”

I sighed, rolling my eyes, even as a smattering of laughter erupted from the group. “Ritz.”

“What?” she said. “I’m just letting him know that I have dibs under multiversal bro code.”

Mentally, she added, gotta pop that tension before people start getting worried.

Of course, that’s what it was, I thought, crossing my arms. There could be no other reason Ritz would go out of her way to embarrass me.

Still, as the rest of the team relaxed, I couldn’t deny that she’d succeeded in her stated purpose.

“We should probably take a break here,” I said. “It looks like we have some…issues to work out before we can leave.” I took a step forward, meeting everyone’s gazes again. “It really has been an honor.”

“Hey,” Robin said. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I gave a wry smile. “As if I ever could.”

With that, the group slowly parted, one last round of hugs and high fives given out before the team loaded back up into the Bioship and the four of us—my own team, maybe—moved towards the coast. Three of us could fly, and any one of us had the ability to carry Ritz.

But at the same time, we had a perfectly secure little pocket dimension to use. The other Taylor and I silently set up barriers as Raven pulled out the MiniMoire. No doubt the situation was weighing on her mind as well.

Maybe five minutes later, we were all seated around the cozy little tea table I’d created when first setting up the pocked dimension. 

Most noticeably, my double and I chose to sit on opposite sides.

No one touched the tea.

“So…” Ritz started. “Anyone want to enlighten me on what that mess was about?”

“I could feel your panic,” Raven added. “Even when it started to flow through both of you as if you were one.”

I shared a look with the other Taylor. She shrugged, gesturing for me to take the lead. “That seems like more or less what happened.” I said, crossing my arms. It was strange, being aware that I should only have one. Just another problem to handle.

“I could feel my memories getting swamped with a whole bunch of new ones,” the other Taylor said. “Luckily, it seems like they faded out, but it still gives a whole new meaning to ‘don’t cross the streams’”

I blinked at that. “Since when were you a ghost busters fan?” Dad had loved those movies when I was growing up, but I’d never saw the appeal.

She laughed. “Tony made me build a ‘proton pack’ because he wanted to study ghosts or something one time. It was a really fun experience, ‘specially because we ended up trying to design a whole new branch of technology from first principles. Didn’t work in the end, though.”

It was almost eerie, hearing someone talk about their life in my voice. Not the least of which came from the differences in diction.

She was a lot more… off the cuff, than me. I wasn’t sure what that said about the two of us.

“It sounds like you found a good mentor,” I said. It was with practice that I suppressed the little surge of pain that rose whenever I thought about Kent. “It doesn’t really solve our problem though, does it.”

She shrugged. “I mean, get me a radioshack and some exotic elements and I could probably whip up a scanner to figure out what’s going wrong.” She grinned. “Course, that would also mean ‘crossing’ up again, and I’m not really in a rush to see the inside of your brain again.”

I clicked my tongue. “No,” I said. “Maybe we should shelve that.”

“Couldn’t you just Planeswalk normally, then?” Ritz asked. “Not that I was complaining, but do you really have to hold hands?”

I held back a groan, “Ritz.”

The other me just laughed, but I felt a small tremor of embarrassment run through her. “We’re running off of one spark here,” she said. “Now that I’ve had time to sit down, I can tell that if I tried to planeswalk, I wouldn’t go anywhere.”

“I have the same feeling as well,” I said.

“Right.” The other Taylor nodded. “This power of ours didn’t really come with an owner’s manual…”

“But it does provide good instincts, from time to time,” I finished.

We shared a look.

“We’re really doing the sentences thing, aren’t we,” she said.

I shrugged. “The more things change.”

She cleared her throat. “Anyway, that leaves out option A, which involves going to my base of operations, because I’m the only one who knows the way there and, like we just mentioned, can’t really show you guys the way there unless we decide to say screw it, one is the loneliest number for a reason.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Should we look for solutions on this plane, then?” Raven asked.

“Uh, last I checked Taylor was the leading magical expert on this plane,” Ritz said.

My double grinned. “Who, me?”

I sighed, doing my best to hold back a smile. “People have taken to calling me the Sorcerer Supreme,” I said, ignoring Taylor’s ‘oh hey, we have one of those too!’ “But even though I might be more directly powerful than Fate and Kent were, that doesn’t mean I have their knowledge.” Not even with the knowledge that Trigon had given to me for ‘free.’

If I could even rely on it.

“That being said,” I added, “the problem is something to do with…our spark, and our original power, no doubt.”

“Yeah,” the other me said. “Not sure I’d want anyone here poking around in that part of my soul slash brain. No one’ll have the know how either.”

“Nor would I really want to give them any of that knowledge,” I said, frowning.

“So whattawe do then?” Ritz asked. “I’m all for sitting in our private club house twiddling our thumbs, but last I checked this seems like a pretty serious problem.”

“I mean, only kinda?” the other me said. “We could always, you know, just never touch each other, or leave this plane, or go back to the people we cared about on other worlds ever again.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm. “No biggie, really.”

But…the conversation had sparked another train of thought.

Clearly, we didn’t have the knowledge to address this problem ourselves, and so far it looked like the only beings on this plane that new about Planeswalkers, that would be Lords of Order, Chaos, and Greater Demons, were exactly the type of people I wouldn’t consent to poking around in my soul.

Which made a bit of a problem if we were stuck, but, “What if we weren’t stuck,” I said.

“Huh?”

I rolled my eyes, “I don’t look good with that expression on…” I murmured, causing the other me to shut her mouth and give me a weak glare. “Raven can travel between Planes as well, and I happened to make this little pocket dimension just so she could carry people between them.”

Raven blinked. “The assumption that you would be traveling on your own is only that, an assumption.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Okay so we’re not stuck here,” Ritz said. “Where are we planning to go.”

The other me sighed. “Smuch as I’d like to go back home, I don’t think I can really show you the way there. Not like I really planned out this section of my trip.”

Ritz tilted her head. “How would you find your way back in the first place then.”

It was me who answered. “After stepping out into the Blind Eternities we can begin to get a sense of where we are,” I said.

“Zactly.” My double held her arms out. “Might have taken a few jumps, but I would have got us there sooner or later. Unfortunately, without the ability to do that, we’re still sunk. Less we want to try and go to planes at random until we find one that has what we need.”

Ritz grinned. “That could be fun.”

“We’ll save that option for now,” I said. “I think I might know someone who can help us. Not that she’d do it for free.”

Within my soul, a tightly bound orb of demonic energy pulsed in a steady rhythm. I’d sequestered it, the same way I had sequestered the new influence of Chaos and Order magic flowing through me. The knowledge was more esoteric, but so much demonic energy? I wasn’t letting it touch the rest of me if I could help it.

Fortunately, I knew someone who liked little things like ‘free’ power from demonic entities, and also happened to be a Planeswalker who had left me with a handy little location tucked away in my mind in the form of a minor compulsion.

“One of my old teachers was a Planeswalker,” I said.

“That’s a bad idea,” Raven said.

“Maybe,” I admitted, “But I think it’s a better one than shaking down random trees, and at the very least I’ll have something she’ll be interested in to offer as a trade.”

“What?” Ritz asked. “Something cool?”

I only nodded silently as Raven glanced away. “I’ll be happy to get rid of it, if nothing else, and even though she’s a terrible person, well…” I shrugged. “Lilianna Vess strikes me as someone who keeps the letter of her oaths, if never the spirit.”

The other me grinned. “Sounds absolutely perfect,” she said. “Instead of going to people who might betray us, let’s go to the one we know will betray us.”

“Well, you know what they say.” I shrugged. “Better the devil you know.”

Ritz cocked an eyebrow. “So where, exactly is this Devil of yours, Taylor?”

I gave a wry chuckle. “On a little Plane called Innistrad,” I said. “She told me where to find her when we last parted ways.” Left an annoying little compulsion too, not that I hadn’t removed that before coming to this decision.

In a way, it made my choice even more galling. 

On the other hand, I didn’t see much of a better one.

Neither of us had said it, but I knew that the other Taylor and I had both felt the pressure since we’d first almost been drawn back into a single being.

It was slight now, so slight that I could almost pretend it wasn’t there, but it was growing stronger.

To put it bluntly, we didn’t have the time to wander aimlessly and hope a solution dropped into our laps.

Not if we still wanted to be ourselves by the time this was over.

Ritz glanced around the table, taking in all three of our brooding faces no doubt. Then she grinned. “Well,” she said.

“I’m sure this Innistrad place will be grand.”

***
***
A/N: This is a transition chapter, next week, we begin Innistrad in earnest. Hope you like!

Also, I've made some changes to the previous chapter based on feedback, namely just extended the part before the first scene change to add a little more context, hopefully it helps some with the abrupt feeling. I'll post those changes live right after this is published.

As always, thanks for being here! Let me know what you think.