OSOS 0x1A

Spargens

M( -.- )RA

Mora complicated?... Was that a pun?

Mara looked to the other two ‘skills piloting bodies’, then back to Debug. It was already jarring enough that three exact copies of her had just walked into the room, but apparently Debug was different? As usual, it felt like she had more questions than answers, and honestly? It was about time that changed.

“What do you mean by ‘Mora complicated’? And what is this place?”

Debug half-smiled and looked back to the other two, still unsure if she was the best ‘person’ to explain everything, but Ed was in no condition to elaborate, and Interrupt showed no intentions of piping up any time soon.

“Well… Do you remember the alien ship at all? Or the Nexus? How about that ring?”

Seeing Debug point to ‘Apotheca’, Mara nodded. When she’d touched it, a flood of memories had come rushing back, and while a lot of it was spotty, she could remember enough to know what they were talking about.

“Yeah, it’s all a bit spotty, but clearly this isn’t the same ship– So why’s the ring here?”

Interjecting with a pained cough, Editor spat out a single word through gritted teeth.

“Bait.”

Perplexed and curious, Mara looked to Debug for elaboration.

“Bait?”

“Yeah, they want it back, and Ed is buying us time, so let me get to the point.”

Placing both hands on Mara’s shoulders, Debug leveled what she thought was the biggest bombshell they needed to speed over.

“Mara died on that ship. She’s gone. We’re just the leftovers.”

Mara stepped back, pulling herself from Debug’s reach. She knew she was a clone, after all, she’d been ‘respawning’ at the stone plinth for god knows how long, but Debug was implying something else by that statement, and her use of ‘we’.

“We’re the leftovers?”

“Yeah. You, me, and those two over there…”

Trailing off, Debug looked at the other two skills, then to Apotheca.

“And, if my assumption is right… Every other daemon skill of yours."

Mara’s head spun to look at the ring that had captivated Debug’s attention, then back to her skill-turned-clone, desperate to connect the dots.

“What do you mean by that? What’s the ring got to do with us?”

Mara’s confusion was a little uncanny, Debug was still sorting things out herself and seeing Mara just as perplexed was like looking in a mirror.

“Well…”

“–We were supposed to enter it.”

A rare fourth voice piped up from behind them as Interrupt cut in to drop another cryptic bit of information, which caused both Mara and Debug to spin around and look at them, though Mara spoke up first.

“Supposed to? Who says?”

This time, it was the Editor who spoke up, albeit after a coughing fit spattered with blood.

“Well, I’d say you did, but– NNNRG– we’re reaching the limits of English grammar.”

Cradling their abdomen as a series of pains wracked them in the middle of their sentence, the Editor struggled through and wheezed out the rest of what they had to say.

“They’re ‘old you’. Former you. The original ‘Mara’ before ‘Pinky’ got involved.”

The original Mara? Before Pinky? How does that make any sense?

Mara looked to Debug for answers, but Debug only returned Mara’s confused look.

“Old me?...”

“Before Pinky?...”

Realizing they were both effectively asking rhetorical questions, Mara and Debug both shared a silly look as the ridiculousness of their situation started to sink in.

“It’s like we’re twins, huh?”

“Heh, I was going to say the same thing.”

Both stared at one another for a moment, fully taking in the surreal situation it was, before both simultaneously burst out laughing. For all their differences, so much about them was alike.

“Hang-on– You still haven’t answered either of my questions. What is this place?”

Debug took a deep breath, she knew she’d have to get back to the can of worms.

“You’re right in part, it’s not the same ship. In fact, it’s not even a ship. It’s a Domain– An externally maintained space. Like a neighboring dimension of sorts, you have one too; it’s where I used to be, before… All this. Specifically though, it’s my Domain.”

Mara’s eyes went wide as her gaze darted between facets of the room to scrutinize.

This is a Domain? Debug’s domain? Why does it look like the– Oh right, bait.

“You said I have one too, but how did you get– Oh… that’s what you meant.”

Debug nodded, affirming the realization Mara was having.

“Mmhm. ‘Mora’.”

Glancing back at the other two in the room, Debug made her way over to the seemingly-absent Interrupt and slung an arm around their shoulders.

“Correct me if I’m wrong buddy, but I don’t think Mora is just me.”

Tilting her head to the side to get a better look at Interrupt’s blank expression, Debug had kinda already figured she’d need to do a bit more than surface-level prodding to get a rise out of their little enigma.

“See, when Mara over there ‘coined’ ya, you were already this space-folding monstrosity. In fact, you were such a problem, we sucked near every bit of mana in the area dry.”

Sliding their arm off of Interrupt, Debug stepped back and crossed her arms as she leaned to the side to meet their absent gaze.

“And you know? I thought it was a fluke at first, an accident of circumstances. ‘Who knew that condensing mana could collapse space?’ But that wouldn’t have been possible without your help, now would it?”

Seeing they still weren’t getting any sort of acknowledgement from Interrupt, Debug began prodding them to emphasize their words.

“Because you don’t just collapse space. There’s a word for that. And it’s what killed Mara on the Sigaxi ship. So what happened to us? How are we–”

“Limited Conceptual Scattering.”

Without even budging from their blank expression, Interrupt cut Debug off with a single, solitary statement, then nothing more.

Blinking, stunned that she finally got an answer, Debug glanced back at Mara, who seemed a bit more confused than startled, but was nonetheless paying rapt attention to Debug’s little ‘interrogation’.

Mouthing the words across the room to see if Mara had any ideas, all Debug got back was a shrug and a perplexed look.

Glancing at the now-curled up Editor, then back to the poker-faced Interrupt, Debug sighed. Any chance of an easy explanation was out the window, and just like Mara, she was getting really tired of not having all the answers.

“Ah fuck-it. I know I’m gunna regret this.”

Turning back to Mara, Debug squirreled their mouth to the side, chewing on their cheek as they mentally doubled down on what they were about to do.

“See Editor over there? They’re my skill. I ‘coined’ them. Which I thought was an ability exclusive to you– Not that you’ve really looked into it at all. Did you know you’re full-on manifesting an entire magical construct tailor made to your needs? They’re not System provided. But that’s beside the point I’m trying to make. I can do what you can do, so vice-versa, you should be able to do what I can do.”

Mara walked over to where Debug was standing, she certainly had her attention.

“What exactly is it that you’re going to do?”

“My abilities are rooted in ‘interfacing with the subtext of the world’– Something that I’m concerned might resolve differently in a different ‘world’, and I’d much rather avoid experimenting without at least some precautions. However, judging by Editor’s deteriorating state, we don’t have time to play twenty-questions with Interrupt over here. So I’m going to attempt to ‘Debug’ them, and we’ll see what happens.”

Mara’s eyebrows snapped together as she glanced between the pair of them with increasing concern.

“Have you… done this before?”

Debug chuckled, placing her palm upon Interrupt’s forehead, figuring they wouldn’t mind.

“Heh, not in my own Domain. And certainly not like this.”

Leaning on her last word as she pulled at her latent ability, Debug invoked her namesake, and just as she’d anticipated, immediately regretted it.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

She’d seen how they looked back in Mara’s Domain, and it gave her a headache when she didn’t have a brain. Plugging into her directly like this was like sticking her finger in a socket. Immediately, a raw torrent of experiences began to bombard Debug’s mind like a tornado bursting with shrapnel, a veritable whirlwind of confusion and mental strain serving a one-two punch to her consciousness.

Noticing Debug was struggling to keep her standing, Mara stepped up to brace them, but received quite a shock as her hand made solid contact with Debug. Her eyelids lagging, Mara found her senses equally bombarded by the overwhelming flood of visions, but in doing so, eased enough of the burden on Debug for her to rip her hand away.

“Fuck. ‘Elsewhen’ is right.”

Cursing under her breath, Debug thought back to Ed’s off-hand comment as she struggled to process the suffocating number of visions she’d just been assaulted with.

“Oww. What the hell was that? Elsewhen?”

Glancing back to Mara, who was now pinching their temples in a desperate bid for relief, Debug registered why she hadn’t passed out in the overwhelming tide.

“Oh– Well that’s interesting. You hopped in that, didn’t you? It definitely got easier when you did, we should experiment with that later– But to answer your question, I think Interrupt is a fourth-dimensional skill. Ed used that word to describe them earlier. Apparently, they don’t perceive time like we do, which… Well, you see how that looks.”

“Hhuuh. Well did you get an answer out of any of that?”

“Surprisingly, yes. Though, do I understand it all? No. But enough to put things together and confirm my hunch. In a roundabout way, Interrupt is responsible for ‘Mora’– Though not necessarily intentionally.”

Mara leaned over to look past Debug, somehow trying to connect the chaotic perspective to the near-statuesque vibe they portrayed.

“A byproduct of ‘Conceptual Scattering’? Any chance I can get an explanation? I really didn’t get much out of that drug-trip outside of some old guy with a really long beard drooping in his soup.”

Debug started to smirk as she remembered the moment they’d seen together, but froze as an image of an ouroboros emblazoned itself within her mind, only to fade a heartbeat later leaving naught but some word starting with ‘L’ lingering on the tip of her tongue.

Shuddering, Debug tried to wrap her head around what Interrupt had done, post-collapse. They’d effectively made a black-hole out of mana, thanks to Interrupt’s ability to consume far too much of it for their size; likely an artifact of their spacetime-defying construction. However, it was what had happened after that boggled her mind.

From within the chasm of nothingness, ever falling into an ever-deeper pit, Interrupt had effectively ‘stepped forward from their past’ and spent what could not be measured in rational time painstakingly sorting out every single particle of mana into what constituted who, until the beginnings of her new Domain had formed with them inside, almost like a really-slow reverse etch-a-sketch.

“I– We’re a problem, you know that? Interrupt and I were basically vaporized, as thoroughly as one could be, but they put everything back together, from the past. Me, themselves, and what would eventually become the space you’re standing in.”

Mara leaned past Debug to look at Interrupt once more.

“I get the headache thing now.”

“Yeah, imagine how I feel– I remember most of that.”

“Uh-heh, true. I’ll take my blessings. Thanks for frontlining all the time.”

Debug looked at Mara, a bit caught off guard by the unprecedented gratitude.

“Heh– Of course… We’ve always had each other’s backs. Though now a bit more literally than before.”

“Pfft– Way to twist a wholesome moment into a joke.”

“We’re pretty good at that, aren’t we?”

Mara and Debug shared a moment, marveling at the absurdity that they were. One an up-teenth reprint, the other some absurd amalgamation of skill turned clone. However, a thought gave Mara pause, and she couldn’t help but voice it aloud.

“Were you the Mara from the ship? Or a part of her?”

Debug looked at Mara, concern flitting across her brow.

“...Yeah. I think so… She definitely got scattered…”

“It would certainly explain where you came from, though I guess without Interrupt around, it took me a few tries to put you together myself…”

“Heh, but wait– That would mean The Lost Wilds, and the world it resides within, is inside that Sigaxi singularity, the one they called The Maw."

“Ooh– You’re right. So… Who put that world together?”

Debug gave Mara a curious glance, but found the pieces clicking in her own mind before she could voice the question.

“Right. Because the natural state inside a black hole is a chaotic abyss. You’d need… An externally maintained space inside that void.”

“Exactly. Who’s Domain?”

“[ Mine. ]”

Mara and Debug both whirled around in tandem, searching for the source of the booming robotic voice, however neither liked what they saw when they found it.

The Editor was sitting stock-still and completely upright against the pedestal. Gone were any signs of pain or discomfort, though an ankle and a forearm were still wildly out of place, they seemed to pay it no mind. In fact, the far more discomforting thing was the eyes of neon-green fire charring the sockets where the eyes used to be.

With a noticeable amount of effort, whatever was possessing Editor threw its head to the side, taking in a full view of the large ring mounted on the far wall.

“[ Apotheca. So she does endure… ]”

Slapping a limp hand up to the surface of the pedestal they were leaning against, the foreign entity using Editor as a ragdoll began to slowly drag their limp mass upright.

Sharing a glance, both Mara and Debug knew whatever this was, it was bad news, however it was Mara who ended up asking it a question first.

“Who, or what, are you?”

The possessed, half-numb Mara-skill paused in its efforts to clamber upright, swiveling their top half far enough to spot Mara out of the corner of its eye.

“[ We are The System. ]”

“–Oh perfect, you’re right on time then.”

Without warning, their third remaining member piped up as they cut past Mara and Debug, swiftly approaching the relatively helpless ‘System’.

“You see, we’ve been waiting for you. Planning on it in fact. And I do believe we are T-minus one minute and forty-two seconds to total collapse.”

“[ Total collapse? What have you– ]”

Flicking the roughly gelatinous ‘System’ on the forehead, Interrupt spun to face the other two before anyone else could say something to interrupt the interrupter.

“Mara? You should see yourself back to the Submergence Field, it’s the room you arrived in. It should activate in the surge if you can’t activate it yourself yet. Hard to keep track of your progress, you’re a bit of a tangent after all. Debug? You’re coming along for the ride, you paid for the round-trip after all.”

Mara and Debug shared a confused look between each other, both unsure of what to make of Interrupt’s sudden burst of activity. However, as their comments weighed in on their minds, Mara spoke up first, verbally trying to process the jumps her mind was making.

“Wait… I’m going back to the garden and you’re going… back-back. Oh. Ohhh. I see. That. That makes sense. It’s only right, right?... You’re what’s left of the original Mara, I’m just a clone… Not that that is really… a bad thing… but… I came here for you, but I guess we were always meant to part ways at some point.”

Debug looked from the watery-eyed Mara, to the stone-cold Interrupt, then to the seemingly drunk Editor/System slowly sinking back down to the floor.

“I… Wha… Going back? How does that work? Do I even get a–”

“No. There’s a lot of reasons I could list why you can’t, but persuasion is more efficient. If you don’t come, I’ll make you wish you had, and you know exactly what I’m talking about Ms. Mora.”

Debug’s eyes went wide, for there was a very specific vision she’d seen while debugging Interrupt. One she was still grappling with in her own moral battlegrounds, and certainly not something she wanted aired in front of Mara.

Unlike both Editor and Interrupt, who were basically piloting extensions of her Domain, her own body was as much flesh and blood as Mara’s. And that had to come from somewhere.

“Fine. You win. Mara, you really should leave. If what I think is about to happen, happens, you might honestly be better off back in the frozen garden– Sorry about that by the way, it was a rushed job with little time to consider the consequences…”

Trailing off as her last comment hit a little too close to home, Debug shuffled closer to Mara to embrace her in one last hug, hoping she wouldn’t notice the bubbling anxiety within her.

Over the shoulder over Debug, Mara looked to Interrupt, unsure if she wanted to protest or cower. One minute they were the equivalent of a life-sized doll, the next, they’re commanding the room like they’ve always been in charge.

Foreknowledge is dangerous.

“I don’t like it, but fine. If you insist I go, I will, and I won’t ask. Clearly if they’re capable of blackmailing you with it, I don’t want to know. You said I can do what you do right? Debugging on my own? I’ll give it a shot. Who knows, maybe I’m still a natural at all that computer stuff.”

“Heh, did you ever stop?”

“No, I suppose not… Hang-on– Is that The System? The one from your prompts?”

Debug glanced over to the basically-passed out slump of bones that was formerly the Editor.

“Uhh… Yeah. I think it is…”

“And you’re taking it with you?”

Debug locked eyes with Mara, then turned to Interrupt.

“Isn’t that going to cause a problem for–”

“No. A replacement has been sourced and is enroute. T-minus fifty-three seconds.”

Mara eyed the door to the hall that led back to the room she’d entered in.

“I guess this is goodbye then.”

“For now. I think… Maybe… If I caught it right, this might not be the last time we see each other.”

“Huh. Welp, guess I’ll try not to die in the meantime– You do the same?”

“Of course, though I doubt you’ll have to try very hard, it’d take an act of divinity to smite you at this point I think.”

Mara met Debug’s eyes, both a bit watery, but neither could keep a smile from tugging at the edges of their restrained expressions.

“T-Minus twenty-seven seconds.”

Realizing she was squandering what precious seconds she did have, Mara bolted out of the room, faster than she’d ever run through The Lost Wilds. Pounding down the corridor like a bat out of hell, Mara had to grab the door-frame as she swung herself back into the cylindrical room, just as the rune spanning the entire floor bloomed in a rainbow of pinks, whites, and orange, and its entire contents were shifted back into ‘normal space’.

{ √Δ }

The white lace adorning the black frills of her gothic dress jostled in the icy wind that was so unwarranted for this time of year, in this locale. Madison had been gone for no more than a few days on her recent delve into the dungeon, yet when she returned, she’d been bombarded by a hoard of messages that made very little sense. Other than her presence at home was desperately required.

However, once she’d made her way out of the forest, she almost wished she hadn’t. Her home was a wreck. It looked like an ice-wyvern had chosen just her abode to smite with some wraith-freezing blizzard. Nearly half a kilometer of their plot had been transformed into a slice of frost-bitten peaks, no plant or structure had been spared a layer of ice and snow, even the ground cracked with a dense layer of perma-frost.

Yet it wasn’t the devastation that gave her the most cause for alarm, rather it was the sudden lack of sensation as Madison entered the iced-over land. To most mages, those outside of the military, the feeling would have been absolutely foreign, but to her? It felt almost exactly like the anti-magic devices they’d been finding near the borders, except about a thousand times stronger.

Holding a finger up, Madison summoned up one of her most basic motions of magic, a simple flame of purple, suspended above her index finger. Yet all she managed to produce was the tapering flicker of a candle drowning in wax.

“This isn’t good.”

Glancing up at the house, trying not to look at the devastation done to her garden, Madison scoured the area for any signs of Thelma or Celeste. The latter was the only one who’d been sending her messages, but it was Thelma’s house. The lack of any further messages from either could easily be chalked up to the dense mana suppression, but equally so, if she wasn’t already dead, the cold would definitely be a problem. Time was inherently of the essence when it came to the ‘squishier’ people in her life.

Forcing what mana she could to trickle into a single spell slot, Madison cast a rough-and-dirty Locate on Celeste, and only got a small nudge back after a worrying amount of time. Pursing her leathery lips, Madison tried not to imagine the worst. She might be a necromancer, but undeath wasn’t a fate she would ever push on a friend.

Following the nudge of her Locate spell, Madison dashed to a halt as she entered the garden, slightly slipping and sliding as she hit the iced-over section in the center. Around her, the ice was at least several centimeters thick, even on the plant stems, and had seemed to almost flash-freeze everything from this point out.

“An epicenter. Gotta be.”

Reaching down, Madison placed her palm upon the ice, intent on sniffing out who had done this, and how. But ended up snatching her hand away almost immediately. It felt almost Fae in nature, raw and untamed. There were no signs of malice, just raw carnage, and zero signs of any particular invocation.

“Well that’s perplexing…”

Prying her attention away from the terrifying wonder of magic that had just landed itself on her doorstep, Madison shifted back to following the nudge of her ongoing Locate spell, though she didn’t need to go much further. Braced against the steps of her now caved-in home, was the stone-cold body of the six-foot rogue, with the only saving grace being that Thelma wasn’t with her.

Jumping up into the air before suspending herself just above the anti-magic field, Madison scanned the homestead, then fired off another Locate spell– This time for her oldest friend.

Yet, as the minutes creeped by, not even the slightest hint had nudged her. If she was anywhere in the country, she’d at least have some vague idea of her direction. Heck, even if she was dead, she’d still be able to find her body the same way–

No, even as she cast and recast the Locate spell, Madison was slowly forcing herself to accept the perplexing idea that Thelma had simply disappeared from the face of Somniantes.