Chapter 57 - Cera - Sinews of Reality

Cera's knees hit the floor as the dimly lit nexus of the station reappeared in her burning eyes. They were burning. They had to be. There was no other way to describe the pain.

She was doing everything she could to not scream at the top of her lungs, and the vivid memories of what she'd just experienced were working wonders at being distracting.

Everything changed when Lady Esther asked 'Fen' to activate the sequence. The world went dark before a colossal door appeared out of nowhere. It was so huge she couldn't even fathom its boundaries.

Soon, it creaked open of its own volition, opening up to a hazy vista shrouded in mist. But in the center of it all was a light.

Then, the very next second, it sparked. Just like thunder in the sky—but contained. It shone through the mist for a fraction of a second as its glow branched into a thousand more streaks of light that traveled many meters outwards in an instant before vanishing.

It was bizarre yet enthralling. An impossible wonder. Everyone knew that lightning couldn't be contained. Even Fundamentalists had long given up on controlling any sort of thunder.

Yet, before she was able to make any sense of that scene, her Vision came crashing down as her sight morphed into a million things her brain couldn't fathom.

The Everflux.

They were the possibilities. Mostly the ones she couldn't grasp.

But knowing she had limited time, she suppressed her awe and isolated her viewpoint through the construct she had long planned. She followed the steps exactly as they were mentioned in the Observation Record.

Yet, she was still pleasantly surprised when Everflux listened to her and settled down into her chosen vista.

The entire ordeal was a symphony of sensory delight. Now, if only she could manage to keep her eyes open, she might see it. She squeezed her eyelids harder, working through the pain for long, agonizing seconds.

Until it became bearable.

When she opened her eyes, she felt it. It was like a veil that had covered her eyes since forever was lifted. The connections became clear, and interactions turned apparent as she saw the lines. The lines that linked everything.

The Sinews of Reality.

Something only Enlightened Conductors of Ephram had the privilege to lay their eyes upon.

And now, she was one of them.

IT WORKED!

A smile spread across her face as the Sinews populated her vision, connecting the typewriters with the ground, the ground with pipes, the pipes with Vern, Vern with Esther, and many more such links.

She tucked the hairs that covered her eyes behind her ears as she noticed all kinds of Sinews. There were ones with various densities, tenacity, colors, and targets. Everything meant something.

This was what she had to work towards. It wouldn't be long before she would lose the guiding light of Free Representation.

She now had power of her own. Her eyes, though brighter, carried a quieter intensity—she could finally not be a burden.

Gazing at Vern's calm visage, the thought crossed her mind, I even managed to shove such a calm and intelligent person into the jaws of death. What am I, if not a burden?

But not anymore.

She had to set things right. The guilt had been gnawing at her very being. The paralyzing fear and inability to do anything had made her want to scream multiple times.

It had threatened to consume her when Lady Esther declared everything was over, and Vern left the room. She thought he was disappointed. That he wouldn't be back. And she felt it. The cold. Just like that night. She was sure that even he was out of ideas. And that it was all her fault.

Cera didn't care if she died. She was surviving on broken fragments of hope anyway. There wasn't much for her to live for.

But the idea that others might die because of her foolish choices was disheartening. That Vern might die because she got him mixed into this whole ordeal hurt more than the idea of being left alone.

He had been nothing but understanding, adapting to every twist the situation presented. He hadn't once complained or cast blame her way, and that only intensified the guilt bubbling within her. If he had faulted her, at least this situation wouldn't be as suffocating as it was now.

He had no business coming into such a hostile district and getting almost mugged to death because of her. Ambrose didn't weigh on her conscience as much because he came in knowing full well the consequences, but not Vern? He couldn't have known.

She had naively believed and convinced herself that some benevolent entity or harmless item would be waiting for them in the station. That it would be a dangerous but essentially harmless exploration.

Oh, how wrong she was.

Alistair's revolver was her only saving grace and worth. However, even that might have been better used in Vern's hands. She would be long dead if it wasn't for him. Or worse—she could have been raped and left to rot in some alleyway.

But now, there was a possibility for her to set things right, maybe even repay a little of what she owed.

The Observation Record of Conductor had many Visions, few of which she remembered by heart. She just had to get familiar with them.

Yesterday, when she had reported about the library and its oddity to Alistair at Von Industry's head station, he had rewarded her with more than just some steam and bullet to train her aim.

He had also explained some of the esoteric Visions that were mentioned in the Observation record. Concepts that were just a clump of words before had become ideas that took root in her mind.

And now that she was sensing all of it happening with her own two eyes and perception, those ideas turned into Insights that would later become the foundation for her thought space.

UGHH! she shook her head, "Now's not the time for that."

She forced herself out of the daze. It would be unfortunate if she let some harm come to anyone in this room just because she was too busy sorting out her guilt.

"What the actual fuck?! Why am I the only motherfucker dealing with these batshit lunatics?! Why are you acting mad, too? Help me already, you shitter!"

These words and the voice gave Cera a pause.

Wasn't that…Ambrose?

She turned around and saw him dashing through the room with that theatric blue flair of his at sharp angles, avoiding the attacks of figures in white. His back and forth managed to keep all three of them at bay, but he was losing ground.

That's when the rest of the world and its intricacies started registering in her mind.

The Apostles are already here! she thought to herself as a chill skittered down her spine. Was she too late?

Ignoring Ambrose's vulgar speech—something she couldn't wrap her head around right now, she got up and rushed in front of Vern and Esther. One of the men in white who slipped past Ambrose was running at both the unconscious people with a sword in his hand.

She didn't even think before—

BANG

Steam rose from the chamber of her gun as she growled at the man who had dodged it easily, "Get the hell away!" She didn't know what else to do. This was too sudden. She had never used any Visions before this, and what if she couldn't manifest them in time and got Vern killed?

The man clicked his tongue and retreated with a jump—avoiding the next circling strike of Ambrose's cane whip as he shouted, "Siris, Leo, this heretic is strong. You two, focus on him, I will take care of our prince and princess alongside the nuisance that just woke up. We must wrap this up before Father Quentin shows up, or he'll be disappointed."

Father Quentin? So these weren't the apostles? That had to be the case. If Ambrose alone could hold back the Apostles, there was no need for Lady Esther to fall back to such desperate measures.

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The man and the woman by the door nodded as one of them charged towards Ambrose at full speed with his broadsword—the white cape flowing behind him.

Simultaneously, the sacred-looking woman yelled, "HERETICS MUST DIE!!" Standing tall by the entrance of the nexus, she clapped her hands together and closed her eyes as a golden glow overflowed out of her eye sockets.

But Cera backed away and tore her eyes away from the woman. She had bigger problems to address.

Their leader was doing something to the longsword in his hand. The tip of the blade began to glow resplendently as he looked at it intently with his golden eyes.

No.

She couldn't let him complete whatever he was doing. She had to shoot him down. So, she took aim—made easier by the fact that he was standing completely still. It'd be perfect if she could take down their leader like this.

But she had only practiced her aim for a few hours yesterday and wasn't confident in this shot.

Then something clicked in her mind, and she had an idea.

What if I create a connection between the man's head and the revolver?

The very next moment, a line emerged out of thin air and joined the thousands of Sinews of reality that flickered in and out of her vision. It was perfect. Aiming so that the sinew was completely aligned with her line of sight, she took a quick breath.

And pulled the trigger.

BANG

The sinew snapped instantly as she tried to keep the revolver stable from the recoil. But she was doing a bad job of it. Maybe because she was too stunned by the result of her shot. The bullet went right for his head just like she hoped, but what happened after wasn't in her plans.

The leader jerked his head back up the moment the bullet would have pierced right through his skull. And then, out of nowhere, the bullet shattered.

No, that wasn't it.

The bullet exploded into golden fragments, which hovered in the air for a breath before they gravitated towards the blade of his sword, brightening its glow.

Cera was dumbfounded. She had seen Kingsman deflect projectile several times, but this was something beyond that. It was as if the bullet smashed against a wall, shattering at impact.

No. No! I—I need something else.

Bullets were not going to work. And she had no doubt that whatever the leader was building up to would be devastating.

I need to use a Vision. There's no other way.

But the Visions she had studied weren't exactly suited for combat or defense. Instead, they leaned more toward battlefield support. Which might not be as bad, given Ambrose was already taking up all the heat for her. She just had to figure out how to use the Visions in her favor.

She remembered more than a dozen Visions but only understood three enough to give them a shot. And the Free Representation only made her odds more favorable.

First was Symphony of Silence, where she would forcefully suppress all the Sinews communicating sound. But she doubted that the Visions her white-robed foes were charging needed audible chanting. It would be nothing but a waste.

Second was Discordance. It was simpler than the previous Vision, but its effect can be unpredictable since she didn't really understand all the hundreds of classifications of the Sinews she saw. It was a general type of attack that could be used to sabotage interaction between people or their environments. She had to pick the Sinews connected to the target and change its properties.

Finally, the one that might be of some use right this instant was Harmonic Dissonance. It would disrupt the focus of the target—possibly making them fail their tasks. And she didn't hesitate before she began searching for the Sinews needed to make it work.

But there were Hundreds of Sinews.

No, thousands.

No, that wasn't right either. The more she focused, the more of them emerged out of nothingness—connecting to other lines, objects, or even themselves.

Dark, hollow, tangled, hazy, shiny, multi-colored, vibrating, twirling. Everything that could happen to a line was happening, and she didn't know which one was which.

The Observation Record didn't have anything about most of these, and it didn't make sense. Did my predecessors never voyage far enough to encounter these? Did they only show up after the Duskfall?

A trickle of sweat slid down her temple as she continued to stare at the millions of lines around her—overlaying on top of her general sight.

"Cera, get your shit together! Don't just stand there like a useless fucking lump."

"I—I am trying!" she managed a response and looked side to side, her fingers twitching as she almost failed to keep a steady grip on the revolver.

It wasn't working.

There was no way.

It was…impossible.

How was she supposed to isolate the ones related to focus?

CLANG

Ambrose stumbled as the whip fell out of his hand, landing far away from him as the woman by the gate released a blazing golden ray of light from her…eyes. The ray was still burning Ambrose's hand, but surprisingly, it didn't harm his skin at all.

Then it had to be hurting him in some other way. Maybe his consciousness? That would be disastrous.

"FUCK! God Damn it!"

Ambrose dashed one after another as the man with the broadsword slashed at him frantically.

To top all this, the blade in the leader's hand had turned completely golden while the woman clapped and closed her eyes yet again.

Cera's heart beat frantically as things began going out of her control. Why did the Observation record not explain how to deal with this situation?

What if it did exist, but Madam Helena never gave her the sections describing how to handle herself in Free representation?

Maybe she thought it wouldn't matter since Cera would never again have the privilege of Observing an overwhelming number of Sinews in her Perception.

Every Sinew she would have in the future would need to be perceived based on her own Insights of the topic, after all.

Only if Vern could tell me what to do, she thought. He'd been doing that for the past few hours, and everything just worked.

What would he do?

She didn't know him enough to come up with an accurate answer, but it was obvious what his first action would've been.

To take a deep breath and think it over. She did that—just like Vern.

Was it the shiny ones? They looked like what the record had described.

But what if it wasn't? She didn't have the luxury to double-guess herself. One wrong move and that could spell her end alongside Vern's. And Esther's.

Is it the gray one, then. Aghhh!

She might be overthinking this.

Her perception wasn't a picture where she would have to find the required Sinews with her eyes.

.

.

.

What if she just…thought about it?

Or maybe she could do something even better. She could try forming a focus Sinew of her own and use that as a reference to identify others of the same nature.

Yes! That could work.

That was a great idea. She broke out of her focused state and noticed that some Sinews snapped and transformed during her exit. And the moment she 'focused' on these oddities, she noticed a few new Sinews in her Perception.

This is the one!

She quickly realized the kind and looked back up at the leader with newfound vigor. But he was staring right back at her with a crooked grin—glowing blade in his hand as he yelled, "I have shown you courtesy enough. Now die!"

Was she too late!?

No!

She still had a chance.

In no time at all, she singled out all the Sinews around the leader that had the same feeling to them as the ones she had just noticed and waited for him to make a move.

The leader held out the glowing sword where he stood in one hand and, with a flick of his hand, made to slash it in a wave.

"No!! Stop!" shouted Ambrose as he weaved through the broadsword's attacks to try and defend them.

But Cera was ready.

Now!

She snapped the strands that represented the leader's focus, and an acute pain surged in her eyes as she held onto the table next to her to keep herself from falling.

"AHHHHHHH!"

What was it?!

Cera tried and tried, but her eyes just wouldn't open due to the assault on her faculties. So she focused on her other senses. The smell of burning flesh tainted the air complimented by shrieks of the leader

"HELP!!!"

That was a good sign.

She had yet to feel any other pain, so she was physically safe. Hopefully, Vern and Esther had managed, too.

"Hahaha! What the fuck? Is your leader fucking blind or something?" shouted Ambrose, followed by unbridled laughter. She wouldn't incorrectly recognize that arrogant voice, no matter what. She still didn't understand what happened to the polite and awkward Ambrose, but it was a great relief to hear those words just now.

"HELP ME YOU MORONS! I'M BURNING! AGHH!!"

"Leo, keep attacking, or we won't have a chance! We just need to take this heretic down—we can help captain after that," shouted the woman as the glow around her eyes burned hotter by the second.

"AAAHH! I will never let this slight go, I will get you all expelled for heresy! Come help me!"

This was a positive development, too.

When Cera finally managed to open her weary eyes this time, she saw golden flames. Flames that were burning everything within a radius of where the leader was standing just a few seconds ago. He was ferociously rolling around on the ground to extinguish the licks that latched onto his body and refused to leave.

The woman named Siris let out another ray of light from her eyes, which Ambrose dodged by the skin of his teeth with a side-step and a backflip.

But Cera focused on the situation at hand instead. This was far better than she could have ever hoped.

She had done it. Made a tangible change in the direction of fate.

But she didn't want to stop there. She could obviously do more.

She looked around and zoned in on the Sinews of focus around the man with the Broadsword as he continued to slash vehemently. But they were snapping and reforming at a ridiculous pace.

Which meant, He isn't focusing at all.

Her Vision won't do anything to him, even if she gave her it all. It just wasn't suited for someone like him.

So she quickly moved on to the woman.

The woman was squeezing her eyes extremely tightly as a golden glow spilled out of them, and the Sinews of focus around her piled up in droves.

This is the perfect target!

Cera didn't waste any time, and the moment she felt herself reach the limits of the Sinews she could isolate and manipulate simultaneously, she snapped them.

"AHH!"

"AHHHHH!"

Two screams resounded—one muffled, while the other hysteric, followed by thuds as Cera fell on her knees. But apparently, she had managed to disrupt the woman's Vision, possibly even forcing some sort of backlash since the other tumbling sound had come from that woman.

This was good enough for now. Had to be. She could feel it. If she tried messing with another one of the Sinews, she might snap a vein in her eyes instead.

She didn't feel like moving—at least for a while. Amidst the cacophony of screams, she fought to stifle her own pain as she lay grounded.

Ambrose should be able to handle the rest.

"Woah, that was you, huh? You really did it?" said Ambrose, followed by the clank of his cane's transformation. He probably picked it back up. And she knew what was about to come.

SPLAT

GASP

CRACK

She wouldn't be their killer, but her actions undoubtedly led to these deaths. Vern's consoling words from that theater revolved in her mind as the sounds painted a bloody picture of the situation.

HISS

SNAP

THUD

By the end of the minute, the screams died down, alongside the constant clatter of the fight. The room became silent again except for all the whirring of the pipes around them. Vern and Esther were already on the move.

When the pain finally became manageable, she opened her eyes again and was greeted by Vern and Esther, their palms still on top of one another.

Would he—

Her thoughts were interrupted by a booming sound that resounded all around them, "Foolish child, yield now or face your inevitable demise."