Chapter 104: Their Own Brand of Cruelty
Aliyah, Jiro, Yulia, Lina, Amas, and Nara were in a sequestered lounge area. Nara lay on Aliyah’s lap, passed out from pain and emotional release. The comfort she found with Aliyah granted her a brief, but still tormented, reprieve.
Aliyah ran her fingers through Nara’s hair. The outworlder wasn’t sweaty; they didn’t sweat. Her pallor was pale. Large eyebags puffed like proofing bread. Her hair was messy and ratty, like birds had stacked twigs and made a nest of it. Occasionally, small dots of purple light approached the surface of her skin, like bioluminescent jellyfish floating to the surface of the ocean, although they never breached the surface of her skin.
The atmosphere in the group was tense.
“They would go this far?” Yulia said, staring at the exhausted Nara.
“She has that much value to The Advent,” Lina confirmed.
“Aren’t they afraid that even if she goes through that portal, she’d never work with them?” Jiro asked.
“Many are obstinate when the first cross the threshold. Once the realization that their life will never return to what it once was, they accept a new life.” She glanced at Nara. “It is not unlike the hardships and choices of the outworlders. They are transported to a world not their own, and have no choice but to make a new life for themselves. In such a situation, how long can one persist?”
“But outworlders have no choice,” Aliyah said. “Their choice had been made for them. If we make the choice to step through that portal, the decision to abandon the old for a new life had already been made.”
“There is less resistance,” Lina empathetically explained. “The Advent boasts a culture of scientific exploration and technological progress. Researchers and inventors are greatly respected. In is a world that fully supports your pursuits of knowledge, appreciates your discoveries, no matter how small they may be. I daresay it is a paradise of new knowledge.”
Yulia glanced at Nara, at Lina, then finally at Jiro.
“You’re going, aren’t you.” Jiro saw. Perhaps, he felt relief for her, that someone would survive.
“I am,” Yulia said. “I will hope I can see you there.”
“You see that, and you feel reassured? That you can entrust your life to them?” Jiro said, pointing sadly at Nara, who suffered as she slept, clutching at Aliyah like a man stranded in an ocean storm to his life-saving plank of wood.
“Either I die here, or I see what’s on the other side. Maybe they’re lying, Jiro. Does it matter? At the very least, I can see for myself what the truth is.”
He closed his eyes somberly, his head shaking in denial.
“Take care,” he said.
“You too, Jiro.”
*****
Nara blearily opened her eyes. She felt the warm quilted blanked trapping the body heat, protecting her from the mild chill of her bedroom. Turning her head, she looked outside her second floor bedroom window. The house her new stepfather had inherited from his family was a short drive away from the outskirts of Copenhagen, and nestled between a small conifer forest which offered some privacy. Her mom was more of a city goer, and once she had married her new husband, purchased a small apartment in Copenhagen to live in. Her mother was a staunch believer in the value of real estate. She wasn’t rich enough to be a large scale landlord, but instead saved up enough money over her life to purchase a few apartments to rent out, on top of working as an accountant. Her mother’s Chinese upbringing told her real estate was a valuable inheritance, a tenant she staunchly followed.
Her mother was also a minimalist, so she did well in small apartments, satisfied with the location and indifferent to the lack of space. There was enough room for Nara and her sister to spend the night together with her mom in her small, Danish apartment, if Nara and her sister shared a room.
Nara preferred open space, but she had also begun to appreciate the convenience of city life. They had spent the holidays in her stepfamily’s house, however, and not the small city apartment.
“Was that all a dream?” She said out loud, to hear the thought as something physical, and to ground herself.
She felt her arms. No shackles. She felt any pain either. There was no Guide, no Astral jumping, no magic powers.
No familiars. No team.
Nara mind drew a blank of white noise as she wrestled with the empty sensation of a life she loved, now lost.
Once the holidays were over, having spent the entirety of her PTO, she’d be back at her job, working 8 hours a day, plus an unpaid lunch hour, whoop-de-woo.
Was it all a dream, or not? Was she getting Harry Potter’d?
She retrieved her phone from the bedside table and checked the time. It was 9 am, and she was due for a nice breakfast. She briefly scrolled through her text messages and social media, resolutely ignoring any work emails, then wandered downstairs. Her mother was up, organizing Christmas leftovers and adding some new dishes to make breakfast. There was Chinese rice porridge and some pickled vegetables. She hadn’t found their favorite pickled mustard roots in the grocery stores in Denmark. Leftover Christmas dumplings were fried up: the best way to eat dumplings. She made a quick cold cucumber and garlic salad—her mother thought every meal needed vegetables. Breakfast was no exception.
“Good morning,” her stepfather greeted her.
“Good morning,” she returned the greeting, “You know, I had this wild dream.”
“What was it?”
“You’ll probably all think it’s childish. My sister would probably like it though. She often dreams about having superpowers. In summary, I had magic powers on another world.”
“That’s a short summary,” her stepbrother noted. “How about some details?”
“Hm, well, it felt like it lasted months. It was exceedingly realistic.”
“Okay,” he said, “But what were the powers?”
“Uh well, I could teleport.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Classic. Teleportation is convenient.”
“Had a few familiars. I liked them a lot. A large dog—couldn’t talk. A floating silver robe—could talk. And a glowstick—also could talk. The last one, he was sassy.”
“The glowstick was a he?”
“Yup.”
“I really expected talking animals, not talking objects.”
“I guess I pulled a bit of a Beauty and the Beast.”
“Oooh,” her sister interjected, also arriving from upstairs, “I love dreams about superpowers. Was I in it?”
“No, it was just me. In fact, nobody from the fam was in it.”
She pouted, “I dream about you.”
“I can’t control my dreams.”
“You’re an introvert even in your dreams.”
“Sort of, I guess. I had a bunch of new friends.”
“Doesn’t make you not an introvert.”
“I’m not denying that.”
Nara sat on the right of her sister, always. Her older sister was left handed, and if she sat to her left, they’d bump elbows while eating.
They finished breakfast, and Nara and her sister helped her mother wash up the dishes. Her stepbrother and stepfather helped clear the table and clean up the kitchen.
“I’ll be making a trip to the city through the arch,” her stepfather said. “Do you want to come?”
“What?” Nara said, something ringing in her mind with an odd tone of dissonance.
He looked confused. He gestured to the arch in the middle of the living room. Had it always been there?
“The arch. That one that leads to town and your mother’s apartment.”
“There’s no magic here,” Nara said. “There shouldn’t be magic here.”
“How else would we get into town?”
“With a car?”
“You know your mother hates driving. It’s the worse part of this house: the drive into town,” he chuckled. “Thankfully we have the arch, else I wouldn’t know if your mother would stay here at all.”
“I hate driving too, doesn’t mean I use a portal. We don’t have portals!” Nara insisted.
“America just has shitty, ill-maintained public transportation,” her sister said, “Our subways keep falling apart—there was that one time when a ceiling tile almost fell on me. At least Denmark has these cool portals.”
“Why is it in the house then?”
“Had enough money to get them installed, duh. I thought you were all for this? What’s with you?”
Nara felt like she was developing a headache. She felt this throbbing, burning pain build in her wrists. She futilely rubbed them, hoping to alleviate the sensation. Maybe she was typing too much—ever since she started reading fanfiction…
Her stepfather smiled encouragingly, trying to connect with his stepdaughter. Their relationship was still tinted with awkwardness. “We always take a morning walk. A bit late for it now, but better late than never. It’s cold so make sure to wear your jacket and winter boots.”
“And your gloves and your scarf. And your hat. You two are so weak to cold,” complained her sister, “I have to live through these northeastern winters. I’ve built up a resistance.”
“I don’t think that compares to Denmark,” she countered.
The rest of the family got ready while Nara stared blankly from her seat at the table.
She shook her head.
“There is no magic here.”
*****
Earth’s lack of magic was an unexpected blessing. Any dreams Nara had of her life back on her world could not be used to convince her to enter the portal. Portals needed consent, which meant they could not be disguised. There would always be a portal. Any Earth dream was a reprieve from the hallucinations that spared no effort to convince her to accept relief and enter the portal.
The nightmare beetle didn’t select her dreams. They were conjured from her mind of things she missed and wanted to see. The mind was off limits; not even the goddess of knowledge directly read minds. Her dreams were her own, induced by drugs.
She blearily opened her eyes again, but reality and dream were already starting to fuzz together in a painful, sickly haze.
“You’re awake?” Aliyah said, looking down at her.
“Unfortunately.”
The throbbing, burning pain returned to her wrists. The nightmare beetle was creating new toxins and new sensations of pain Nara didn’t know possible as she spoke.
“You’ve been asleep for a few hours.”
“Anything happen?”
“Yulia left.”
“I see. How many are left?”
“20.”
“I’ve done a number then.”
Aliyah smiled reassuringly and patted her head.
The nightmare beetle decided to make physical touch feel like a branding iron, but Nara didn’t say anything. She appreciated the intent behind the gesture.
Nara looked towards Lina, who sat with good posture and quietly waited her turn to speak.
“Why did you give me advice?”
Lina smiled, “Do you think I am helping you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I only wanted to alleviate your pain.”
“Doesn’t your boss want me to feel pain?”
“She doesn’t want your suffering. She wants you to move on. It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Was it as Raina said? That most members of The Advent felt genuine sympathy? That they struggled with violence towards others? Lina certainly was an exceptional representative. But it didn’t matter how kind Lina was.
The Advent had showcased they were capable of their own brand of cruelty.
*****
“You are so convinced they have this amazing world,” Eufemia said. “Why?”
Eufemia studied Erin’s face. She couldn’t read her aura; it was sealed, but Eufemia didn’t need her perception ability or the ability to read her aura. She had honed her ability to read facial expressions as well as her intuition for people over her years of conning and crime in Nekroz. Erin Nisei may be a wily, conniving woman, but Eufemia saw right through her.
“You’ve been there, haven’t you? Their world.”
“I have,” Erin admitted, her eyes glazed in recollection. “It was beautiful. I could go wherever I chose. They had vast portal networks free for anyone to use. Permanent portals. There are no slums, no poor areas, no second class citizens.”
“That you saw,” Eufemia scoffed.
“I’ve been there multiple times. I’d like to think I have some skill in detecting the illicit, Eufemia. You’ll allow me that, won’t you?”
“No. You saw what world they wanted you to see. Their crowning jewel. That entire world could be perfection, the perfect playground to show their naïve idiot visitors like you their curated image. The queen parasite of their parasitic hive.”
“Perhaps Eufemia, you are incapable of believing what you have not seen. But I have seen it. I have experienced it.”
“Since you’ve been there,” Zinnia said, taking back control of the conversation. “Where is this portal?”
Erin shook her head, “I don’t know. I was portaled to an unknown location, then I entered an astral space which held a portal to another unknown location. From there, we were transported with a ritual.”
“An astral space?”
Encio sighed and shook his head. “So even if I called my grandfather, it would be useless.”
“You think they’re held in that astral space?”
“I think it’s a strong possibility. I can call him over for him to scan the surroundings for auras, just to check.”
Zinnia felt a bit of a headache coming on, “Normally, we don’t ask diamond rankers to come over ‘just to check’.”
“He is my grandfather. He just so happens to be a diamond ranker. Besides, he’s not busy.”
“Just a grandfather,” somebody quietly echoed. “Just so happens to be a diamond ranker,”
“Not busy,” someone else whispered.
“Alright. You do that,” Zinnia said, promptly giving up. Honorary Duke Sezan Aciano would be a great boon to the search, even if she had reservations about calling a diamond ranker like he was a low rank odd jobs adventurer.
Then, a quiet voice spoke up into the din of the meeting. “Um.”
No one heard him.
“Um,” he tried again. “I may be able to help.”
Zinnia used her aura to silence the meeting room.
“What is it?”
“I am, uh, Lawrence Ruffolk, a priest of Knowledge,” Lawrence said, briefly introducing himself. “We currently have no method of long-distance astral space detection. Is that an accurate summary of the issue at hand?”
“That’s right,” Ranshi said, who was also a Magic Society member. He had been Mona’s assistant during Nara’s Adventure Society certification with the ability to operate magical vehicles. “Our only method of detecting astral spaces is by close proximity or by chancing upon them, aside from historical records.”
“I have been recording the books miss Edea had recorded with her racial ability. My goddess had told me to prioritize the books on astral magic,” he said nervously, eyes not meeting any of the table’s occupants. “I’ve had some time to read through them.”
“And?”
“I might be able to…create a ritual to detect nearby astral spaces. But uh, astral magic is not my specialty. I sort of…dabble, now, due to the role my goddess has given me.”
“You need help? Well,” Zinnia said, throwing a glare at Erin, who smiled serenely back, smug. “We’d have more astral magic specialists if they weren’t all captured or dead.” Zinnia almost wished she was a leonid, so she could growl at her.
“There is a person who has experience with astral magic that I believe is qualified,” Encio said, “and would be more than willing to help. Astral magic is not her known specialty, but she has been known to study it for her inventions.”
She had, after all, been dabbling in the sort of astral magic that inadvertently opened a path to the astral to allow Nara to cross over.
“Who are you suggesting, Aciano?”
“Amara Edea. Don’t you think she’d be a great help?”
“While I completely agree with your suggestion, Aciano, we have no way to contact her. I had intended for Nara to do so. And she was unfortunately captured before that happened. We will have to wait for Redell Gainer’s next visit to the church of the healer. I want someone posted there to request his presence.”