"Isn't it silly?" Juserin said, sighing once again, his face downcast.

"But..." Lisa fingered her jaw. "Why is the trap under this mountain?" Bath could barely discern that something was present, Lisa recalled. Why would any World Devourers on rampage even think to look under the mountain, instead of just...eating everything else?

Juserin took in a deep breath, then exhaled, as though trying to control his temper. "Why, indeed," he replied scathingly. "See, the trap my great forefather, Juserin the twenty-ninth, purchased had an expiration date." He began to slowly pace, working his way in a square around the carpet. "He bought the cheapest trap possible, you understand. Back then, Illudis was less advanced than it is now, less prosperous. However, Juserin the twenty-ninth decided to invest all our holdings on a defense against the only threat that could, foreseeably, spell this planet's demise. 'Twenty-thousand years,' he said. 'We'll be rich by then,' he said."

Lisa watched, face filled with pity as Juserin's countenance grew increasingly unsightly. Wish I brought popcorn.

"Unfortunately for him, Illudis' utterly unstrategic position never lent itself well to accumulating wealth. Actually, if you ask any experts--"

Lisa cleared her throat impatiently. "So the trap was supposed to last for twenty-thousand years...but it's been fifty-thousand years since Juserin the twenty-ninth bought the trap, correct?"

Juserin nodded sharply.

"How was the trap originally supposed to work?" Lisa asked, radiating an air of intensity.

"It was simple," Juserin replied dryly. "Just a simple tortus. Or is it fungoise?"

Lisa looked at him blankly. Tortoise? Fungus? "A what?" Translation error again!?

Juserin's eyes swiveled to meet her own. "Oh, you really have no idea," he sighed. "Let me show you." He walked over, pulling up his chip reader for her to see. On it were a host of applications and functions that Lisa didn't recognize, though one was familiar: the encyclopedia.

He entered something in, his fingers moving painstakingly over the chip reader's holographic touch interface through the fabric of his robes. "Ah, here it is," he said after a time. He nudged the hologram, expanding it before Lisa's eyes.

She grimaced. That is so disgusting, she thought, recoiling. It's like a month-dead bloated tortoise...without legs...Why does it look like its rotting everywhere, especially that nasty shell?

Lisa gasped as she realized what Juserin had been saying: in Juserin's language, apparently the "trap" was the equivalent of a liger, or another cross-breed species. Based on appearance alone, it really did look to be the demonic cross between a tortoise and a fungus. I wonder what its name actually is, Lisa mused, because while this thing kinda looks like a tortus, it really just looks like a biological nightmare.

"So that's it? The trap?" Lisa asked, voice betraying her own incredulity. "And that's under this mountain?" And Bath's burrowing into it like it's an ice cream sundae, she thought tragically. Of course, she was completely unaware of Bath's current, equally disturbing leech x buzz-saw-mouth form.

Juserin folded his arms in his robe, nudging his mouth veil. "After twenty-thousand years or so, the shell...it begins to harden." He said this as though it was the complete explanation to Lisa's question.

Lisa, on the other hand, just narrowed her eyes and shook her head. "Hold on. Why is it a trap in the first place?"

Juserin looked at her dumbly. "What do fungi do?" he asked.

Are fungi a class of organisms recognized throughout the universe? Lisa wondered. Or, is the translator taking the liberty to simplify species naming so that I more easily understand? Lisa couldn't fault it for doing so, if that was the case.

"Well," she began, "they decompose organic matter."

"Torti decompose rock," Juserin explained, "among other things. In the wild, on some no-doubt gargantuan mega planet I've forgotten the name of, they just sit, anchor themselves into the ground, and feed."

Lisa nodded slowly, piecing together the puzzle. "So, these torti must heal extremely fast, as they can pull in more rock to repair themselves."

"Yes, and No. Yes, they heal extremely fast. No, it isn't because they internalize rock; it's because they...well actually, if you consider the energy released from breaking them down in the magma stomach--"

"So they heal really fast, and are really big, and have very tough flesh," Lisa summarized. "This trap will catch World Devourers...how?" I'm convinced no matter how big or tough, Bath would eat this 'trap' for breakfast.

"Honestly, I'm unsure," Juserin admitted. "The trap is useless. Truly, the only good thing to come from Juserin the twenty-ninth was this mountain."

Before Lisa could respond, a crack! resounded through the area. The ground shuddered, as though someone had kicked the mountain and the mountain's reflex was to kick back (though with a notable delay). Lisa, seated on the pillow-couch, was fine, while Juserin had to readjust his feet to stay vertical, relying on his second set of arms to assist his dedicated legs.

"Is this normal?" Juserin asked, not at all concerned. "Is the dragonleaf doing something?"

What the actual fuck is he doing!? Lisa seethed internally. To Juserin, she smiled radiantly and nodded. "It's nothing to worry about. Thank you for the information: it's been informative."

"A pleasure, of course," Juserin said graciously.

Lisa abruptly leapt off the couch and exited the estate, heading towards the opening Bath originally left in the spongy-walled tunnel.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Back in his living room, Juserin shook his head in wonderment. "Deities are very difficult to understand," he muttered. Just then, his servants delivered a savory appetizer, floating it over atop a hover dish. "The first thing she did when she came here was demand food," he murmured, recalling her domineering entrance. He exhaled a puff of air, then shook his shoulders. "And then she asked about an entity under the mountain when we had more important things to discuss. No matter: who am I to question her Radiance Asil's actions?" However, the politically savvy side of Juserin filed away this encounter for future analysis; as always, he'd recorded the whole thing.

---

Lisa landed at the end of the tunnel; she stuck out her hand, using it as a source of light. Her eyebrows turned inward as her mouth curved down. "The tortus has already healed the damage," she hissed under her breath. She slammed her fist into the spongy dead-end of the tunnel, splitting one of her knuckles. She gritted her teeth.

However, there's still something I'm forgetting, Lisa realized. She stretched out her injured hand, watching as the line of blood stitched up into unbroken flesh. She closed her fingers slowly, contemplatively. I can find him. If I get close enough.

Lisa frowned, concentrating. I haven't recently tested how far my range is. She knew that, before COTD, her detection range was under a thousand feet. Her manipulation range was within fifty feet of herself. If she wanted to influence entire crowds, however, this meant that the closest member of the crowd had to be within twenty feet of her person; in general, it wasn't a huge limitation.

Since COTD, she hadn't done very much non-crowd manipulation; as a result, she hadn't needed to test her range to its utmost limit.

And to find Bath, I only need him to be within my range of detection. Besides, I can't manipulate his shell anyway.

And so, Lisa pushed out.

And out.

And out.

"Holy fucking shit," she hissed. "What the fuck!?" Three miles, and still going...

She was almost hesitant to keep expanding her shell outward. This was way too much of a jump...who the hell went from under a thousand feet to over three miles in just a few months?

I need to talk to Lepochim, she thought, wishing the sour deepthink had come with them to Illudis. The annoying alien had insisted on staying behind until they "actually decided to leave this abysmal wasteland," by which he had meant the string of gates leading away and to Earth.

Lisa continued to expand her shell outward until she was unable to go further. It's almost the entire width of the city, she noted. The city is about seventeen miles from end to end. I'm able to cover around two-thirds of that distance, so I'd guess my shell is about...11, 12 miles long? That gives me a radius of around 6 miles.

"Well, shit," she said, beginning to chuckle nervously. "And my range of manipulation is likely a tenth of that. So what, point six miles?" She did the conversion in her head from miles to meters. "Man; that's almost exactly one kilometer."

She shook her head. "Is this how powerful kursi get after a few decades?" she wondered. Nevertheless, when she'd tested her range, she'd been expanding horizontally outward, as was normal: most entities she'd want to mind-touch would be parallel with her, on the ground. Her shell's influence didn't function like Bath's: instead of a sphere, her influence was a cylinder, with a height equivalent to her own.

She was already in the jerboa tunnel a thousand or so feet from the surface. Thank god, she thought to herself. No verdora kursi--aka Juserin--were able to feel me expanding out my shell. She didn't know what Juserin would think of it--he knew that Lisa had a shell, obviously, and that she could manipulate it like a kursi. After all, she'd given him a freaking lesson on their way back to Earth.

In addition, Bath's shell was extremely bizarre, what with it looking like a hole in reality. Perhaps Juserin just thinks that deities have kursi symbiotes, too, albeit strange ones. I suppose that would make sense.

So, in theory, Juserin shouldn't think anything of Lisa expanding out her shell...but she wasn't so sure. I really, really need to speak with Lepochim. She sighed in resignation.

Nevertheless, she figured that restricting her range of manipulation to a semi-circle and rotating it out was easy; the process reminded Lisa of taking the integral of a sphere. All I have to do is send my shell out and around, almost like I'm drawing a half-sphere. She'd never done such a thing before, but she had no doubt in her ability to do so.

She restricted her shell to a half-circle, in front of her, then began to twist it downward. To her surprise, she found...

Oh my fucking...it's even bigger than I thought. Turns out, her range really, really didn't work like Bath's range of influence at all. She felt like face-palming. How did I never try doing this before? She lamented. Her shell, being a shell, naturally took the form of a sphere around her body; when she expanded it out, it was still...3D, though it only expanded horizontally. Did it really never occur to me to change its shape from a circle to a semi-circle, or a line, or...something else?

She groaned in frustration and missed opportunities. I'm sure people in Ritus and other organizations had this kind of advantage, she grimaced. What the actual hell, Lepochim!?

Lisa took in a deep breath. Not the time. Without further hesitation, she sent her shell out to its fullest length in a semi-circle. It's area effectively doubled, allowing her to expand out the full eleven or twelve miles in a single sweeping direction. She felt the tiny, inconsequential shells of worms and insects, and then...

The shells stopped. There was a very clear point at which they stopped, somewhere beyond the layer of sponge-rock. That must be where the tortus's main body begins. While the spongy-rock was clearly alive, as evidenced by its self-healing in Lisa's absence, worm-like entities were still present throughout, no doubt feasting on the seemingly inexhaustible, rocky flesh.

A few miles down, however, and the tiny shells disappeared. That's where Bath will be.

But even if I find him, what am I going to do? Lisa thought, staring daggers at the spongy rock in front of her. I need to find a way to get through this rock. She considered the boons at her disposal. Jerboa weren't able to break through this tunnel, she noted, and Bath did so with ease. Why? She considered the methods that jerboa would use to dig. They use their teeth and feet, she thought, obviously. On the other hand, Bath used a mouth of rotating teeth to rip the wall apart. She sighed. So, slashing into the rock won't work. But how the hell am I supposed to dig into the rock like Bath?

She clenched her fist and stomped her feet into the ground, a manic expression coming over her face. "We're supposed to be equals," she snarled. Her expression softened; her lip quivered. "Which is stupid." He's the reason I've come this far, she sighed exasperatedly. She shut her eyes. "That's not true," she said, as though arguing with herself. "I created COTD. The other kursi and I are its backbone, the reason why people are so..." she opened her eyes. "Peaceful. Without us, we have disasters like Kray City." I still can't believe the two kursi sent there made their own prostitution rings instead of pacifying the population...

"We are--can be--equals." She still didn't really believe this--after all, what inherently made her different from other human kursi? But that wasn't the point: she was trying to psych herself up.

Her eyes suddenly grew wide, her pupils constricting to fine points. "That could work..." She flicked her hand out, as she'd seen Bath do many times when trying to show dramatic flare. Then, she swiped her hand towards herself, her magnetic sense's force augmented by the physical movement. Tiny shards of metal bit through the earth, congealing around Lisa's hand. Her face scrunched up as she concentrated, manipulating her magnetic sense out to draw in more sharp, metallic elements.

Finally, after she had enough material to make a toddler, she ceased her efforts to gather more.

"Let's see what I can do," she whispered, eyes emanating a startling intensity.