OSOS 0x12

Regnum

{ √Δ }

The wheels of a wooden carriage rattled down a dirt road, trees rushing past on one side, and a vast expanse of crystal blue on the other. In the distance, snow-capped peaks reflected off the wind-brushed surface of the largest lake in the country, a picturesque scenery in any other situation. However, inside the four-horse carriage, the tone was far from tranquil.

“Are you sure your projections are accurate?”

A broad man with a lion’s mane of golden hair tossed a handful of parchment back to the old man riding along opposite him.

“I’ve only had two days, and all I’ve had to work with are accounts of mere glimpses, and even across the whole kingdom, there were only a few looking up that night.”

The burly giant of a man looked over his lanky skeleton of a mage, they’d been through a lot together, and at every turn, the old man had a certain composure, but for the first time, he seemed perturbed. Stealing his gaze away, he tried to fix it on the view rushing past the window as his growing concerns only magnified.

“Do we have any idea what we’re wading into?”

The old man looked up from his notes, well aware the king wasn’t asking about what was written in them.

“...No.”

The king saw the unease written all over the old man’s face, his response felt like watching a man pull his own teeth. Discomforted by the notion that something could unsettle his mentor of all people, he tried to latch on to a plausible excuse to lend some measure of ease to the situation.

“But your visions aren’t infallible, they’ve been obscured before, right?”

The old man looked to the boy he’d practically raised from birth, and tried to fight down the stone in his throat.

“Blocked, yes. Mislead? Of course. But to be outright surprised? As if destiny itself was shifting beneath our feet? No– A quake like this, there never has been.”

Looking out to the trees speeding past, the old man stroked his torso-length beard, straightening out the aged-white strands as he postulated on what this could all mean.

Three nights prior, an object plummeted out of the sky, a shining rod of fire that would have smote even the strongest tribe of wyverns. The impact woke most of the nation, if guild reports were accurate, but thankfully it had struck somewhere where only the hermits ventured.

“When was the last time you ventured into our great wilds?”

The king caught his old friend’s gaze, more than aware of his yearly excursions– Which happened to be just around this time of year now that he was thinking about it.

“Speaking of, isn’t your usual ‘vacation’ out here coming up in a month or two?”

Seeing what the beast of a man was getting at, as he himself had already made the same connection.

“I’m fairly sure it’s unrelated…”

Rumbling jittered through the carriage, swaying as the ground beneath them shivered.

“–Though, that isn’t a great sign.”

The king leaned to look out the wooded window, anxious to glimpse any sign of it.

“It’s definitely in a mid-valley, you’re not going to see it from here.”

Regardless, leaning forward in mime, the old man also found himself anxious to see.

“Heh– You really don’t change much, do you?”

The king’s words caught the old man by surprise, not by the statement itself, but the truth behind the words. In all the years he’d known him, from a toppling toddler to a bastion for the people, not even the old man’s chest-long beard had grown even a micrometer.

Pulling at the trim of his blue cloak as he leaned back, the old man motioned to its hood.

“That’s what this is for, people remember faces more than they’d think.”

The king raised his eyebrows and leaned back, he knew his old friend’s coattails were nothing to scoff at. A former hermit, now the royal magician, and mentor to a whole court of battle-mages. He’d come a long way, and for good reasons. There wasn’t a man alive in any country that could rival his command of magicks.

In the silence following the anxiety-inducing quake, the old man piped up.

“You’ll be headed to the capital after this?”

The king nodded, knowing his friend well enough to understand what he was implying.

“Someone has to pacify the children, we each have our roles here.”

The old man nodded in return, clutching a knotted wooden staff that suddenly appeared as he stood up.

“I’ll be headed on then… Farewell, my king–”

Concluding his sentence by vanishing from sight with neither sound nor light, the king leaned back, gazing at the lake, eyes glossing over as his mind swam with the many other, pressing, concerns of his realm.

M{ -.- }RA

As the elevator doors popped back open on floor thirty-one, Mara rushed out, making a beeline for her front door. She hadn’t even made it down to floor twenty-six before she finally, properly, noticed her reflection in the mirror, and immediately turned her butt around.

If anyone sees me, they’ll think I got abducted or something…

Okay, not actually going to acknowledge the irony there.

Swiping her thumb against the scanner mounted beside the door, Mara tried the handle out of habit, but was met with a disapproving *beep* at the same time she accidentally shoulder-checked the unmoving door.

“–What?”

Wiping her thumb and swiping it again, Mara jiggled the handle and got the same response.

“Fuck.”

Kneeling down to the multi-scanner that came standard in all Federation homes, Mara wasted no time and fished for something in her purse. She wasn’t going to question why it wasn’t working, there were enough reasons in that bag to drown something. Fingers brushing against the metal instrument she was looking for, Mara pulled out the small precision screwdriver she kept in there for the multitude of uses it came in handy for.

Great for self-defense, and apparently, home invasion.

Proceeding to pop the glass panel off the device, Mara exposed the plastic housing beneath, and began unscrewing the splash-plate as quickly as possible.

“Geez… I haven’t had to do this since… High-school? What a trip.”

Spinning the plastic shield off on the remaining screw, she found the particular chip she was looking for without too much hassle, and pulled out a pair of tweezers.

Modern problems…

Poking one end of the prongs to one terminal, and the other on an opposite, Mara waited for just a moment, then reached up and yanked the handle to find a satisfying *ka-chunk* awaiting her.

…Modern solutions.

Flipping the plastic piece back into place, Mara tossed the tweezers back in her purse and finished reattaching the fixtures to the scanner. The whole process took less than a few minutes, but in its defense, that was because she didn’t have her phone to toggle the deadbolt.

Grunting as she stood back up, Mara stashed her screwdriver back in the mess and shuffled inside, glancing over her shoulder to double-check the empty hallway before she shut the door.

I really need to stop rushing, and I definitely need a shower, not just a change of clothes.

Tossing her purse to the couch and ripping off her hoodie, Mara stopped to look at the scraps of fabric. It had been through a lot, but it was no more than trash now, so she tossed the wad of cloth into the kitchen bin and headed to shower. She’d really liked that old hoodie, but there was no Earthly explanation for the amount of carnage its story could tell, and the fewer questions she had to fend off in the future, the better.

Initially, she was only going to take a quick shower to rinse the grime off, but as soon as Mara found she had to peel some of her clothes off, she reneged that idea. After a few hours of scrubbing, enough humidity to start a mildew colony, and what seemed like half her products, Mara finally felt ‘clean’ and was drying off in her own room for the first time in months.

Still toweling her hair with one hand, Mara started plucking through her wardrobe, fishing out a few bottoms before tossing one back in the drawer and lofting the other two onto the bed. After so long wearing the same thing, she wasn’t too sure what she wanted to wear off the bat, it wasn’t a question she expected to be asking herself at any point in the near future after all.

Glancing between the denim jeans and pleated skirt she’d picked, Mara switched out her toweling hand to give it some rest and flipped through possible tops that might match. The first tossed onto the bed was a tank-top, and a second t-shirt followed just after, but as she fingered through the last few possibilities for a third, Mara paused on a white sweater. It wasn’t exactly cold out, but she snatched it anyways and stashed the other choices away.

By the time she’d finally put herself together, Mara’s living room was cast in a late afternoon light, and her stomach was feeling remarkably empty for the first time in recent memory.

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That’s… odd. Which might actually be the odder response–, I mean, which is weirder, not feeling hungry, or finding it strange to be hungry?

Making sure nothing had fallen out of her purse as she snatched it back up off the couch, Mara looked at the skyline around her and marveled at the sight. Billions of people on a planet with no idea how small their worldview was, and yet still, they were thriving in their own way.

“Maybe Indian? Or maybe Pho– Something with some kick, isekais weren’t joking about the seasoning famine.”

Muttering her thoughts aloud as she gave her apartment another once-over, Mara headed back out into the hallway and to the elevator. She knew a couple of places within a station or two, she’d figure out where she was going once she found a phone.

As the numbers on the elevator display shot down, Mara marveled at the possibilities of what she might be able to do in a world of technology and magic. Playing with the shape of a small Mark in her palm, Mara pushed it through more and more complex shapes, something that seemed far easier than it used to be. However, as the numbers reached the single digits, Mara was a little too distracted to see something far more important in the flickering light of the lift.

D[ –.– ]B

In an instant, the world turned upside down for Debug, tumbling through the floor from one side, and tumbling out onto a floor on the ‘opposite’ side, bewildered by the sudden shift. At first it didn’t seem much different, after all, what was one baren room from the next? However, appearances weren’t exactly high on the list of things that might have changed, and Debug knew that much on intuition alone.

Standing up to get her bearings, Debug confirmed that this room looked like a literal mirror image of the other, and the now-transparent floor quite literally reflected that. Beneath her, Interrupt was standing where she had been, and didn’t seem aware– Or didn’t care– where Debug wandered about on her side.

Strange… I’d say this was an observation room, but the perspective is all wrong, and that just seems too mundane.

Stopping her exploratory pacing next to a wall, Debug tried to interface with the ‘Domain’ once more, but instead, the wall suddenly slid away from her palm, quickly extending the room as another panel appeared next to her hand.

“What the…”

> <<

>

> Domain Construct: Given appropriate mana, invoke realm alterations

>

> >>

Oh! This is an Editor?

Suddenly, as if triggered by the thought itself, the room shook violently– Upwards, downwards, left-right-and-centerwards, sending Debug flying, dizzy and spinning. In a matter of seconds, she was sent tumbling back into the room she’d come from without warning, only skidding to a stop at the base of a very familiar pair of flip-flops, but this time, there was more than one set.

Sick to her new-found stomach and struggling to her feet, Debug was still reeling from the sudden rush of changes happening to it, and around it, when it finally noticed there was more than Interrupt in the room– And that the room itself had changed quite substantially.

Glancing between the two identical Mara lookalikes, and the sudden shift in scenery, it didn’t take long to see what had happened and take it in stride– She’d seen Mara do stupider shit in her time thus far.

“Editor, I presume?”

The second of the two Mara-skills looked to Debug, giving a smile and a nod as they introduced themselves.

“That or Ed, nice to finally chat– Interrupt’s been filling me in while you were… indisposed. Sorry about that by the way, until I got the Mana Scoop up and running, we had to use your tether to Mara.”

Blinking a few times as she verified she hadn’t misheard, Debug silently thanked whatever higher power was pulling her strings that the experience hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds from her perspective– It was nauseating enough as it was.

“Okay, first off, hello? I guess? At least I’m glad you’re more talkative than–”

“–From your perspective.”

Pausing a moment to both process, and ignore, Interrupt’s interjection, Debug tried to pick up where she’d left off.

“Um, okay, so– A lot keeps happening, and this is far from the only question I have, but just so I’m sure– Did I just Invoke you?”

Cocking their head to the side, Editor looked at Debug confused, unaware of how out of the loop she was.

“Of… course… Why do you think Interrupt helped you personify?”

{ √Δ }

“A bit early for your yearly pilgrimage, old man.”

A small woman, no more than knee height on a regular human, walked off her porch to greet the man wandering through the gate of her little ‘homestead’. It hadn’t even been three full seasons since she’d seen the old coot, but Thelma had no doubts towards his untimely appearance.

Letting down the heavy hood of his blue cloak, the ancient wizard looked towards the massive towers of bark that grew in his old friend’s backyard before returning the greeting.

“I’d say I was feeling homesick, but… Spare some tea?”

The gnome, taking pity on the road-weary soul, jerked her head towards the house and went to the kitchen to put a pot on. Following her in, the old man spared one final glance, paranoia compelling a final survey on the open fields behind for any signs of danger before he would allow himself past the low-hanging threshold.

The inside of her home was about as sparse as he’d seen it last, which was rather strange for someone who lived so long, his old tower was practically overflowing at this point, but it spoke to the differences in their roots. Though, regardless of her particular reasons, he appreciated there was less to navigate around, or break, something that made house calls in certain regions… tedious.

Finally negotiating himself to a space between the living room and dining room, the old man let decorum slide, as he usually did in Thelma’s home, and sat on the floor next to the table.

Since Thelma was still bustling about for at least one pair of matching mugs, the wizard continued to bite his tongue on more urgent things, and tried to stay present. Something that grew increasingly more difficult each time he saw her, a sign things would be ‘wrapping up’ soon. Opting for a lighter subject, the old man danced around his concerns.

“How’s the frontier been?”

Not even bothering to stick her head out of a cabinet she was waist-deep into, Thelma half-shouted as if it was a regular occurrence, which it almost definitely was.

“Good, got a couple of homesteaders intent on a claim a few miles out– And before you ask, yeah I’ve heard about the outpost. I’m glad they finally took my recommendations about the dungeon seriously.”

The old man smiled, they were exactly on schedule, and that was at least some reassurance that there was a little stability left in the world.

Poking her head out above the counter, Thelma eyed the silkworms the old man called eyebrows as she called him out.

“You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you ya old snake?”

Cleaving a hearty chuckle in return, the man simply stroked his beard and whistled, sending the kettle across the room into a tizzy.

“Oh– You think you’re clever?”

Without any further warning, a cast-iron pan lit up his seven-point barrier as it struck, shaking the walls in its wake.

Continuing to laugh even more heartily as he pushed his wind-brushed hair back into place, the old wizard treasured their little tussles– One wasn’t a friend of Thelma’s without being able to take a joke, or its punchline.

In the moments it took to calm himself down and dab away the damp bliss from his eyes, the old man found a steaming cup offered at his side, which he gratefully received from the hands of his tiny friend.

Nodding pleasantly in return, as if she hadn’t just struck him with enough force to level a building, Thelma made her way to a chair opposite of him and got comfortable. She knew if he was asking for a drink, this wasn’t a talk for loose lips, and all things considered, she had a pretty good idea what it was about.

At first, they sat silently together, gently cooling and sipping at their respective cups, the old man fully aware of the caricature of his own visage molded into the mug, as he continued to nurse its ‘lip’. She’d gone out of her way to burn a whole spell-slot just to make it a permanent object, and so he had already picked out a perfect spot in his new tower for it.

Eventually, the old man had found the halfway point of his own beverage, and dropped all forms of levity with his dear friend.

“You need to leave the frontier.”

Thelma was very familiar with that particular tone, and kept it brief as she downed the last of her cup.

“For how long?”

“Two… Three months maybe–”

Cutting him off, Thelma used as few words as possible to drive her point home.

“Don’t lie to me.”

Catching the mental daggers Thelma was sending his way, the old man sighed and pulled the parchment from his cloak, tossing the lot atop the table.

Glancing back and forth between the pile and the blue-cloaked wizard, Thelma thought about saying something first, but bit her tongue and snatched them up, skimming through the things that looked the most important as quickly as possible.

It took a few minutes more than she’d have liked, and by the time she was wrapping up, a lot of her heat was dissipating. Throwing the last page back to the table, she had to acknowledge that his answer was about as accurate as she was going to get.

“So, you don’t want my help?”

Having watched her come to her own conclusions, the old man gave her a pain-ridden smirk, shaking his head as he gestured towards the back of her house.

“No, help isn’t something anyone’s getting out there, and isn’t something you should be here to offer– At least until the crown posts a few mages out here; you’re going to need passive barriers within a year just for crops.”

Thelma looked over the old man, her friend of many, many years; a giant in proportion to his surroundings, in many things more than just stature. His face was weary with age, and that was far from new, but his eyes held a look of a man torn between the thresholds of resignation and invigoration, swayed only by the winds of anxious excitement.

It was a look she’d seen in many adventurers’ eyes, usually just before they set out to do something unbelievably stupid. It wasn’t a look she’d ever seen in his eyes though, and one that was certainly far more terrifying plastered on the face of a Truthseer.

D[ –.– ]B

Unable to infer exactly what ‘Ed’ had meant with their comment, Debug looked to Interrupt, who was clearly at the root of this whole ordeal.

“What–”

Interrupt didn’t even let Debug get the first word out of her mouth this time, before they cut her off with a quick retort.

“When you’re looking for someone to blame, the call is usually coming from inside the house. You’re just out of time, and we were out of space– Two sides of the same coin really.”

Out of time? Space? How does that explain anything about this??

Taking pity on Debug as her mouth could only open and close in response to such a left-field statement, Ed stepped forward and slung an arm around her, spinning her around in the motion, gently ushering her first steps into her newfound Domain.

Within their close proximity, the Editor took a moment to drop their more formal mannerisms and tried to meet Debug on a more emotional level to pull them back from the bewilderment.

“Look, it’s a lot to take in, suddenly having a body, getting thrust through new environments, talking to her– Trust me, we’re all connected, I get it.”

Stopping as they reached the center of the new, larger, addition to the room, Ed clapped their hands together, eager to finally exalt the fruits of their tireless labor that Debug had so gracefully bestowed upon them.

“Without further ado my liege, this is The Hub of your Domain, a nexus of information piped from the many facets of your magnificent realm–”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah– Time-out. Liege?”

Practically scoffing at the term, Debug questioned why in the world Ed had suddenly taken a court-minder’s tone.

Equally confused, the Editor raised an eyebrow and inquired back.

“This is your Domain, and you opened the door, why wouldn’t you be our Queen?”

Stunned at such a conflict of interest, Debug could only sputter–

“What about Mara?”

Taking a moment to ponder, hand-to-chin, Ed seemed to mull over the query before resolving a satisfactory answer.

“That’s paradoxical, and therefore non-valid. You are Mora, she is Mara, this is known to be true, and you are you.”

What. The. Fuck. Are both their language-nets huffing riddle-juice?

Figuring she wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of anyone else in the room, Debug decided it was high time to stop running about and look to her own feet, otherwise she was going to pull a ‘Mara’ any minute.

Hesitating for a moment as trepidation grew, Debug wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answers she was going to find, but her intuition was screaming at her, she knew where she was going to find the most valuable clues to her situation, and that was within.

Pressing her palms together, Debug self-invoked her own namesake, something she hadn’t done since Mara had become a Daemon Queen.