Ch. 2.16 | Definitely Not a Lore Dump
PoV: Sanya
Sanya blinked. She did not know what to think about any of that. Was it true?
It maybe had some semblance of truth, how else had she and Esmat been stopped in that in-between space of nothingness and watched as those incomprehensible beings tried to break through?
“W-what?” Mai asked. “How do you know? Are you correct? What do you mean?”
Calinichia sighed. “The portals between realms and dimensions were closed a hundred and seventy years ago. You may realize this is when that ‘storm’ of yours consumed the world around you.
“A large battle was fought, and portals were destroyed, connections severed. A result of that was the massive magical attack of your storm, and a blast slowed and slowed by all the temporal magic tampering during that time, throwing what should have been a quick blast into hundreds of years of it, until Of-Jinan came along and ended it.
“This event cut off our portals, and those of everything else. This all happened in a desperate attempt to mend the barriers, and to stop the eldritch entities from breaking through—beings from a world beyond the reach of the portals and to worlds like the Abyss.
“The reopening of the Abyss portal started this anew, awakening the scouts that found connections through the weak barriers of Spatial magic. From there, they could use that power to open more portals. With each portal opened, the barriers fray, until the entities can break through again and consume our world, rich in the resources they want.
“Any questions?”
Everyone blinked or gaped or sat there speechless. What even was there to say to that? How did they process that information? How did they know that Calinichia wasn't just lying or making information up?
The panic inside Sanya could not be calmed with Mai's embrace. Sanya's heart slammed in her chest. Her breathing threatened hyperventilation. Sweat began to seep from her pores.
They were all going to die. Or, at least, Sanya was. It was actually over. Either she died or unknowable entities would breach into their world and consume it.
Sanya could already watch her life flash in front of her eyes.
Years spent as a boy, and suddenly noticing everything was terribly wrong with the dawn of puberty.
Coming out to her parents.
Being disowned.
Ending up on the streets.
Sanya would die in this body, mutilated and yet incomplete. Scarred from her own actions, years of self-harm, one particularly bloody decision after years of frustration and anger . . . The searing heat from desperately trying to stop the bleeding . . .
She did not want to die until Mai or someone—anyone—could Fleshweave her into more fitting characteristics.
She wanted to live more years with Mai at her side. Experience more of the world. More friends. More people. More knowledge.
Her life, recently, wasn't nearly as bad as it had been years ago. She could tolerate this. She could endure and wait for her better future.
One that would not come.
Sanya shook in Mai's embrace. The tears threatened her eyes. She never wanted to leave this cuddle. She constricted Mai further. She squeaked, then returned the squeeze.
“Are you okay?” Mai lifted a hand to pat Sanya's head.
If she was a cat, she'd be purring like mad. “No,” Sanya answered in a whisper.
“I'm sorry . . .”
“Mmm . . .”
“W-where were we? Uhh, questions?” Mai swallowed. “So, Esmat and Sanya opened up this portal, the blue one, the black? . . .”
“Yes and no. They are part of a twenty percent. Maybe a forty or so innate Spatial mages in the area with parasites, of which work together. Although someone is killing them off . . .”
Someone was killing them off? Who? How did Calinichia know that?
“What about the world beyond us? Do they have Spatial mages with parasites?” Zahira asked.
“No. Your region is unique in both innate magic and a boundary frayed enough for the parasites to escape through.”
“Huh.”
“What's this part about killing them?” Mai shifted. “You aren't seriously proposing we do that? . . .”
“They have opened up what's left of my realm to a connection beyond. I am back to being myself thanks to them.”
“Not that it will be long enjoyed?” Zahira muttered.
“I am just happy to live for the months or year we have left. See, Nadiyya doesn't need to become a vampire, you'll both die soon.”
“What if we want to live out our lives?”
“Just . . . fight them off,” Calinichia smiled.
“What? These eldritch entities?”
“Sure.”
“Is that possible? Didn't people end our world a hundred and seventy years ago in order to stop them from entering in the first place?”
“Well, the other side—the losing side—thought they could fight the entities when they came.”
“But they lost, are you sure we are strong enough? We don't know anything about our magic, less than they did all those years ago, probably.”
“Just kill me,” Sanya said.
“Nuh uh, I'm not,” Mai snuggled into Sanya further. “There's no point in living if you're not around.”
“What about everyone else?”
“Hmph,” Mai said. “Hey, will parasites continue to latch onto Spatial mages forever. Will they continuously need to be killed or whatever else?”
“As long as the portals are opening, yes.”
“What if we close the portals?”
“They will open again. They can't close unless there's another full erasure. Either they die, or we all do.”
“Oh . . .”
“Kill me,” Sanya offered, breaking away from Mai's hug. It took considerable effort to get Mai to loosen her hold around Sanya.
“We're not!”
Sanya glared at Mai. “We're doomed otherwise.”
“We can't! Stop! Please. Don't even suggest it.”
“Then we have to fight incomprehensible beings. I . . . I saw glimpses of them, that's why the teleport was so delayed for me. I was . . . somewhere else . . . They broke my mind. We can't fight those things.”
“You're just going to try and take the easy way out, again. Where's my powerful Voidwitch? Hmm? Firmament Sovereign? Show those death noodles that you're in control of our world.”
“Death noodles?”
“Yeah,” Mai grinned. “You know how eldritch things are always described as having tentacles and stuff?”
Sanya swallowed. “Sure . . . Death noodles . . . Anyway, you don't understand. There is nothing we can do to stop them.”
“. . . We'll have to try.”
No. Mai didn't understand—they didn't understand. Even Calinichia did not seem to truly fathom what they would all be up against. If this information was correct, then the best choice—nay, the only choice—way for Sanya and Esmat to die. To thwart their parasites and to get those portals closed. To sabotage them and slow them and hope that the parasites are weak and everything so that the portals can't be opened further or again.
If they did not agree, Sanya would just have to do it herself. She bent down and reached for her staff.
Mai noticed and was quicker. She snatched Sanya's staff and then tossed it across the room. It skittered and clanked against the floor.
Calinicha gasped. “My floor! You ungrateful urchin, you scratched my floor!”
“Mai!” Sanya complained at the same time—about the treatment of her staff, not Calinichia's ancient wooden boards.
“Promise me,” Mai’s words were wrought with an intensity, it was almost scary. “Promise me, that you won't end yourself.”
Sanya paused. She could lie . . . Sanya opened her mouth to speak.
“No lying,” Mai jabbed a finger at Sanya. Oh, she was definitely scary right now. Mai turned towards Calinichia. “And your floor, really?”
Calinichia shrugged. “I care ounceless about my floor. It was merely a joke.”
Sanya crossed her arms and said nothing.
“You don't want your staff back?” Mai raised an eyebrow.
Sanya responded with a scowl. She did want her staff back, she just did not want to promise that she would not use it to turn herself into pulp.
The room had gone quiet again. Nobody moved.
Calinichia clapped her hands together. “So, who wants a vampire history lesson?”
This woman had probably been alone for a hundred years. Suddenly, with Sanya and the others in the room, she would not take silence for an answer. Sanya could not understand why Calinichia went from alone to hating that emptiness. Maybe she had desperately wanted to be social, and now that it was here, she would not let it flee.
“No objections! Splendid!” Calinichia cheered.
Mai groaned.
“O-oh. One objection! Or the tea didn't agree with her!”
“Go ahead,” Zahira said. “I'm going to tune it out and think about what you just said, instead.”
Sanya also did not care for whatever history lesson Calinichia wanted to give. She was probably going to speak just for the sake of filling up the space. Maybe she would have a useful thing or two to say. Although, considering her last long lecture, perhaps whatever came out of her mouth would be better unsaid.
The amount of dread and despair coursing through Sanya thanks to Calinichia's words felt crippling. She was falling through a dark and empty pit without a floor. The world around her crumbled until there was nothing but void in its place. The eldritch entities would tear through this world because Mai did not want to give Sanya up.
Why did things have to be this way?
Why had the academy opened up that portal? They had doomed the world for income or something to save Glorestra from going under.
Ironic that Glorestra was a dying cesspool now.
“Great!” Calinicha began. “So, a hundred and seventy years ago, the portals were cut off. That is established, yes? Then a haze started to encroach on our territory and isolate us from the rest of the world.
“We ran this territory as . . . nobles. The humans flourished under us and provided us with food—their evil criminals—and resources—labor. When everything got cut off, everything started to go to Hell until the humans were dying, dead, sacrificed, or whatever else have you.
“Then, we began to starve. Our monster form is a primal, shapeless form that happens once we have starved and lost our ‘humanity.’ We can't transform back or think clearly or intelligently until we feed. But it is hard to feed, and the individual usually just ends up in a mindless rampage until they die. It's all instinct.
“I myself did a small massacre, out of mind, then made a daughter out of instinct and sub consciousness. I went on to feed on that village—barely thinking—and regained my humanoid and bat forms. The other vampires have slipped out by now into their world to feed or whatever.”
Yeah, that history sounded mostly useless to Sanya. Calinichia already went over the monster form thing. None of what she said mattered, great, toss it out. They were indeed words for words’ sake.
“Thank Heliux she's finally over,” Zahira gasped.
“There will be a quiz on that!” Calinichia grinned, leaning forward and facing Zahira. She winked. “I hope you took excellent notes.”
“There was less history in that and more . . . biology of your monster forms and self-indulged narration,” Zahira said flatly.
“Ah! Your ears did hark my lecture!”
“Against my best interests and health.”
“Tsk tsk.”
A bright red light shone through the windows of the manor and spilled out into the drawing room. Even nearer the middle of the manor, away from the glass, the light blinded.
Then, a deep rumble shook the realm. Sanya bounced on her seat on the sofa. The kettle and porcelain vessels rattled. Mai and Lania both squeaked in surprise.
“Someone is destroying the node,” Zahira said.
Who was here? The node's area was too far away for Sanya to detect with [Spatial Sense].
“‘Someone,’” Calinichia growled. “You don't know who it is?”
“Is a vampire destroying it, maybe?” Mai asked.
The light died down to a more reasonable level. The shaking became sporadic and manageable.
Calinichia shook her head. “There is no reason for them to, they wouldn't.”
“Spite? Maybe to lock everyone in with them? Or maybe because they want to delay the portals and the eldritch stuff and everything?” Zahira theorized.
“Is this an issue?” Sanya asked. “If the portal closes, it will just reopen again later. Anything to stop the eldritch is a good idea.”
“You forgot the part where we'll be trapped in here if we don't get there before it gets destroyed,” Zahira said flatly. “We should get going.”
Mai pushed herself off the couch and stretched. In that same motion, she cast [Pocket Repository] and retrieved her staff.
Sanya stood and ran up to her own staff.
“Let's get outside and face towards the node, I'll Displace us close to it,” Mai planned.
The group hurried out of the drawing room and through the manor, outside its large front doors and outside. Nobody wanted to stick around for when the node closed and they weren't there to be teleported out. Not even Calinichia, who decided to tag along. It was probably leagues better to be back out in reality than this dying realm.
Outside, each person touched in some way, mostly holding hands and arms. Nadiyya's bird sat on her shoulder, as did Mai's Fleshspawn on her own shoulder. Sanya still wanted to punt that thing.
Mai pointed into the forest down below, into the distance and in the middle of all the mansions, castles, and city at the edges of the red haze.
“[Organic Displacement].”