"I couldn't return you to your world even if I wanted to," said the black marble. "No core—"
The edge between this human and her world is known to me, as are all edges. Removing this edge is within my power.
"What? Since when can you do that?!" the black marble yelled.
Annie lay in the deepest depths of despair while the words of alien marbles filtered over her, unable to bring herself to think about anything being said.
"Well, you can't send her back anyway. She's our treasure now."
Human, do you wish to return to your world?
The words bounced around in her blank mind for a while before she registered their meaning. She pushed herself upright once more. "Yes?" she said, a slight feeling of hope returning.
"What are you doing?" the black marble hissed.
I have looked beyond the edge of today. The edge beyond the edge. If Annie is kept against her will, there is no edge between this dungeon and destruction.
"That can't be right," the black marble muttered.
A choice must be offered. A choice with no edges in its fairness. Will you choose, Annie?
Annie was already nodding desperately as she looked down at the silver marble. "Yes. Yes! What's the choice? I choose to go home! Can I choose to go home?!"
Your choice will be made after the offer is completed. When I found the edge between your world and this one, I found also the edge that exists in time. There is an edge between your world and time.
"W-what?" Annie said. She could go home? She could really go home? Her hope had rekindled itself in a sudden blast, and now she burned with the need to go back.
"Time is stopped in your world," the black marble clarified. "Finis, stop talking about everything in terms of edges."
My understanding is limited by edges, so are my words limited by edges.
"You—You mean if I go back now, it'll be like I never even left?" Annie asked, hope shining even more brightly within her.
She could really go back?
And it would be like none of this ever happened?
She could just pretend it had all been a dream?
There will be only the edge in your mind.
"Okay, I wanna go back. Please send me back!"
The offer is not yet made. If you choose to return, the edge between you and your world will be removed. If you choose to stay, there will be no edge between you and this offer in the future.
There was silence.
"So I can just go home now?" Annie asked cautiously. "You'll send me back if I want? Or…if…I choose to stay, I can go back whenever I want?"
This is a fair offer.
Annie frowned. "Why the fuck would I want to stay? Send me back now!"
"That's a bad offer, Finis," the black marble grumbled.
If you stay, the edge in your mind will be removed.
"What? What edge in my mind?" Annie felt at her head now, worried that something might have been attached to her while she'd been sleeping.
All edges are known to me. There are many edges in your thoughts. There are edges in your understanding. An edge exists between you and Carl. This edge can be removed, but only if you choose to remain.
"Finis, what are you talking about?" asked the black marble in a bewildered tone.
Annie knew exactly what it meant though. "You mean… You can tell me about Carl?" she asked hesitatingly. "What he's doing here?"
By knowing all edges, all is known.
"Finis, you're a genius!" shouted the black marble with clear excitement. "Why didn't I think of that!"
There is a wide edge between my beginning and your beginning. My understanding is limited by edges, but all edges are known to me.
"But if I decide to go back, you'll just open a portal, and I can go back?" Annie said.
The edge between you and your world will be removed, and an edge will exist between you and this world.
"That means no, you will just be back in your world," said the black marble. "No portals."
Annie knew she needed to make the responsible choice. She was a mother, she was a wife, she was a teacher, and she needed to never again be an idiot like she'd been.
But…
"How do I know you'd actually let me go back if I decide to stay for a little while?" she asked, feeling her palms start to grow sweaty on the denim of her jeans. "How do I know anything you said is true?"
"We didn't have to make you an offer," said the black core. "We could have just kept you here."
That was an obvious point, Annie realized immediately after asking her question.
The longer she is kept here against her will, the smaller the edge between this dungeon and destruction becomes. The edgeless one will be our bane.
"She seems like a normal enough human to me," said the black marble.
The marbles made a logical argument, assuming she believed what they were saying.
Three days is the longest you can choose to stay, and if you are kept longer, the edgeless one will destroy us.
"What about food and water and stuff?" Annie asked, mostly out of curiosity. She wasn't seriously considering it, obviously.
She wasn't going to be an idiot twice.
"Food… What do humans eat?" the black core asked. "Do you like rocks? Or pointy things?"
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"What? No, like…" Annie pointed to the tray of food on the floor that the robot dog had brought in. "Human food? Meat, vegetables, carbs…"
The marbles were quiet for a short while.
"Like this?" the black marble asked.
The space around the bed changed, and shelves of food fell onto the floor containing breads, cheeses, vegetables, fruits, and what looked to be various types of sausages and smoked meats. A glass jug of a purple liquid that might be wine appeared next, and then another with water.
Annie stared. "What are you?" she wondered.
"I already told you. We're dungeon cores!" the black marble said, sounding indignant.
Whatever that meant, Annie didn't really care. There was no way she was going to…
An image appeared in the air before her, as if from a TV, showing Carl sitting in a comfortable-looking recliner wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing the day he'd fallen out of the ceiling in the English workroom and holding a black marble between his fingers.
"After reviewing your story, I've found you to be in violation of our mature content policy," the black marble's voice said. "I'm going to have to ban—"
"Wait, what?" Carl asked, sounding tired.
"I'm a moderator, and I'm banning you," the black marble in the picture said.
"Is this a joke?" Carl asked.
"No, I'm a moderator. I don't make jokes."
Carl rubbed his beard like he always did when he was thinking about something. "Alright, just for the sake of argument, what part of your policy did I violate?"
"Sexual content cannot be a central component of your work."
"Huh?"
"Must I repeat myself?"
Annie smiled as she watched, caught up in the moment of seeing Carl again after so long, even if it was just… "This is a recording?" she asked in a low voice as she watched.
"This is when I first met Carl," the black marble on her shoulder said fondly. "We didn't get along at first, but now he's the best partner a dungeon core could want."
"Hold on," Annie said, turning awkwardly to look at the black marble on her shoulder. "If he's your partner, why don't you just take me to him? Take me to Carl!"
That was not an offered choice.
Annie grimaced. The recording kept playing though, and she got drawn in once more. "Is he talking to an axe?"
"That's Seth'tith, who is leaning against the wall here," said the black marble. "Hi again, Seth'tith!"
She looked around and, to her amazement, realized that she'd somehow never spotted the gigantic axe leaning up against the wall on the side of the bed opposite the bathroom, probably because the axe part was down past the side of the bed on the floor. It even had a moving, demonic-looking eyeball, she noticed when she crawled closer to look over the side of the bed. "Um, hi?" she said as the eye moved to watch her.
"He can't talk right now," said the black marble.
"Oh," Annie said. "Right. Of course he can't talk now." She wasn't personally familiar with talking weapons, but she'd read tons of books where they existed in various forms, so the idea of seeing one in real life was somehow—
The video-marble's sudden shrieking brought her attention back to the recording. She smiled as she watched Carl very obviously trick the core by using his social engineering in some technical way.
"You'll really send me back any time I want?" she asked, knowing she was about to make a very bad decision.
"Apparently we have to or we'll get destroyed," the black marble said.
"Okay, I'll stay for a little longer," Annie said with reluctance as she grabbed a pillow to hold while she watched.
----------------------------------------
The eighth day had dawned, and Annie was still awake, now watching as Carl encountered a heroic-looking young man in shining white armor with whom he seemed to be absolutely furious.
"Who's that?" Annie whispered.
"That's Norman. He went by Normannus most of the time," said the black marble, who had been helpfully answering all her questions along the way. "He liked to think of himself as Kazuto though."
"How do you know what he was thinking?"
"I'm a moderator core," said the black core with notable smugness. "I have to be able to read the thoughts of anyone inside my dungeon so I can enforce rules."
"So you read Carl's thoughts?"
"Well, no, I couldn't read his for some reason. I sort of got a general idea of what he was thinking about though?"
Annie gasped as the younger man started to attack Carl. "Carl!"
Seconds passed, and Carl was suddenly facing a different direction, unharmed, and a massive explosion of stone rocked the side of the dungeon.
"What just happened?" Annie asked, her eyes still wide.
The recording rewound and played in slow motion. Carl turned with incredible speed and punched the young man in the chest, causing him to fly into and through the wall, disappearing into the sky beyond as the camera followed him out.
"Who was that though?" she asked, not having any idea what was going on.
"I can show you his thoughts if you want," said the black marble. "But I have to warn you, they're filthy."
"Filthy?" Annie wasn't sure what that meant in this sense, but she was trying to understand what the hell Carl was up to. So far, it seemed like he was trying to build a puzzle maze for Bobby? Did that mean he was planning to bring her here at some point? Was this Norman trying to ruin it, and that's what had made Carl so mad? She only had more questions the more she learned. "I'll watch, I guess?"
"Alright, but you can't get mad at me when you see how filthy he is. I warned you. Let's start from the beginning…"
----------------------------------------
"I'll fucking kill that bastard!" Annie snarled. Her hands dug into the pillow on her lap, and she quivered with rage. She'd been furious the day before, beyond what she'd imagined herself capable, but now…
Now she was fucking livid.
She'd never wanted anything more in her life at that moment than to…
She didn't even know how to put words to what she was feeling as she watched the same young man rape the same trembling, shaking, scared girl for the umpteenth time. Mercifully, the girl passed out on this occasion, though she hadn't always.
Annie had rushed to the bathroom first time she'd seen it and vomited until there was nothing left to throw up. The sheer revulsion she'd felt had been overpowering. She'd never seen anything even remotely as disgusting as the glee with which he'd violated the poor, terrified girl while she had a nervous breakdown.
Then she'd seen it happen a second time.
And a third.
And a fourth.
She'd almost grown numb to it, her disgust so continuous and powerful that it felt almost normal after the first few occasions, which were played in sequence like a montage.
"Who… Who is this?" she whispered.
"That's the filthy intruder," the black core said, sounding equally disgusted. "He's from your world."
Annie felt her stomach lurch again, and she rushed to the bathroom, discovering that there was somehow more for her to throw up.
The images played much more rapidly at her request. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, that this had happened involving real people. The young man had been with other girls and women, but it was always this one young, sweet-looking girl to whom he always seemed to return.
To torture.
Annie had watched his progress through the puzzle maze, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she breathed shallowly, flushed with anger. She heard through his thoughts how he fondly recalled the girl, as though she'd been a willing, eager participant to her own rapes, and her teeth clenched.
Carl punched him again, and she played the scene back over and over, feeling a deep sense of joy and catharsis when she noticed that her husband's fist was actually poking out through the back of the disgusting rapist's chest. She wasn't sure the last time she'd been so pleased with the man she'd married.
"Ah, there's also…" the black marble said.
The image changed, and now it showed another familiar figure.
"Ir'alith?" Annie said, not understanding…
It was Ir'alith, but it was a different Ir'alith than she'd met. Where the blue-skinned woman she'd met had seemed powerful, regal, and unyielding, this Ir'alith was bound with a pink collar around her neck in a small, bright room with only a desk in it. She wore slinky underwear that Annie imagined would be more fitting on a prostitute, her nearly-naked body's outrageous proportions in no way hidden by her meager covering.
She looked defeated.
The young man commanded this Ir'alith to bend over the desk and cry out his name in pleasure, and she did. He commanded her to kiss him, and she did. He commanded her to do more things, and each time, she obeyed without question.
Annie's hands covered her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. Was this really the same…
The young man reached down and grasped the base of the blue-skinned woman's tail, and she screamed, a piercing, soul-wrenching howl, as he ripped the entire thing from her body. No blood spurted from the stump, but she wailed and screamed in obvious agony, her eyes squeezed shut. Then he began to beat her with her own tail about the face and head while shouting that she was supposed to love him.
"I can't watch this anymore," Annie said, her lips trembling as her stomach churned. "I can't. I can't. Stop. Please stop. STOP!" She pressed her face into the pillow she'd been clutching and started to cry. She cried and cried, weeping for the fates of the women she'd seen abused until she finally fell into a fitful, restless sleep.