“Should we walk you back to your room?”

“No, no, I need to finish this. For my sake.”

“You’ll be okay.”

“Thanks.”

***

The pod deposits them at the palace entrance. Calling it that is an understatement, because the entrance is huge, bigger than three houses jammed side-to-side. Statues of Cenarians line the outside walls, housed inside alcoves. Alien writing is inscribed onto the pillars themselves, bold and daring, searing with light confidently displayed for all visitors to see.

Inside, hundreds of sconces suffuse a golden glow on gray and soft green walls. Three car-sized chandeliers dangle around a stone statue of a Cenarian, larger than life, posed with an arm raised over its head and its tendrils holding a shield. Off to the sides, several corridors snake around the length of the palace before disappearing at tight corners. Thousands of bookshelves line the atrium walls on each floor. Metal railings separate balconies and bookshelves from the hundreds of feet of open space above the first floor. The floors and bookshelves continue upward and upward in a dizzying spiral until the final floor ends beneath the ceiling, bearing a marble-engraved crescent symbol with two lines cutting horizontally across.

Congress, the Supreme Court, and the White House have nothing on Cenarian architecture. No Earthly architecture does. Maybe there is such a building back home, but could it compare against the physics-defying spiraling architecture of a civilization with magic?

“It’s so big,” Cora says, lost within the elegant details. Massive paintings are mounted beside pedestals of miniature Cenarian busts. Gold trim brushes against the gray walls and ends at green walls, where silver continues. Reddish brown chairs and tables surround the statue and cluster beneath the towering bookshelves. The pattern is replicated for every floor above until they’re too high to make out any details. “And beautiful. It just keeps going and going.”

“I’m glad you think so,” their escort, Paranes, says. Unlike most, Paranes is a short, furry, blend of dog and raccoon. His striped tail curls behind him like a raccoon’s, and his ears are perked up like a dog’s. She itches to pet his head and squeal, but Callista is there, and it’d be embarrassing to him. “The governor’s palace is a place of pride for Cenarians. It may be small compared to the capital, but it doesn’t diminish its significance.”

“You’re saying this is small?” She gestures at everything. “You’re joking, right?” She cranes her head all the way back to spot the crescent and double line symbol. “That is way too tall.”

Resma chuckles. “Someday, if time permits, and funds permit, I will take you to see the capital. I never stop being surprised every time I return home.”

Paranes perks up. “Another Estrenian? What district did you live in?”

“Polpara. Your accent reminds me of…” Resma’s tendrils twirl. “Edris?”

“Wow, that was impressive! I thought my accent faded after so many years of work here.” Paranes flicks his tail and folds his ears so they’re halfway raised.

“It has, but you still pronounce the vowels sharply. I suppose some things last with you for life.”

“Yes, I suppose, though I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime here,” Paranes says, ears perking up again. “If anybody wants to, I can provide a tour of the palace grounds while Cora speaks to the governor.”

“That would be ideal,” Eporsa intones. “I have come into this room to consult with local administrators, but never explored beyond.” He wrings his tendrils together and unwinds them. “Are you allowed to, though?”

“I have full permissions,” Paranes boasts, raising his head. “But first, Cora?”

She steps forward like a woman before the gallows. Everybody's watching her. She has to act steady and confident like she does at the hospital. It should be like visiting a new patient or soldier. Cora knows how to introduce herself, how to listen, and how to manage conversations.

But it’s the box! She’s so close to finding out things her research never told her. Maybe who made it, where it came from, why it exists, anything at all. The true meat of the truth rather than the scraps of discarded flesh she had to be content to gnaw on.

“I’m ready,” she says, even as her heart beats furiously.

“I meant if you would like a tour after you finish.” Paranes creases his eyes. “The choice is yours.”

“I’d like a tour, thank you.”

“In that case, since you’re ready, follow me.” He turns toward the rest of the group. “The rest of you may wait in the atrium. If you need restrooms or are hungry, a worker will attend to you shortly and you may request what you need. I won’t take long.”

Cora waves an awkward goodbye, and the guards wave back. Eporsa offers a fist-bump, and she fist-bumps back. Last is Callista, and for her she opens her arm and quickly hugs her.

“What was that?” Callista says quietly, though her lips quirk into a smile.

“Don’t worry about it,” Cora huffs, and pivots on her feet before her burning face betrays her.

The walk lasts several minutes. Paranes escorts her past several hallways, each a variation of the atrium. They don’t share a word, but Cora doesn’t think she can say anything without blabbering. Her insides twist and squirm. Her heart rate spikes. She wipes off her sweaty hand on her jeans, yet the moisture builds in seconds.

She’s so close. She practically vibrates in equal parts excitement and apprehension. What if she needed to bring the box? What if she needed Liam to act as a back-up witness?

On second thought, maybe it was better for him to stay. She can’t imagine what he must be feeling about the box.

They descend into the bowels of a rustic floor, decorations sparse and bookshelves lacking. Doorways lead to empty rooms, or offices that look like they haven’t seen a good cleaning in years. After a few more convoluted turns, the corridor yawns wide open and they step into a metal box suspended over darkness.

“Brace your legs,” Paranes warns, bending his own.

Cora follows his example, but gulps and stares upward at the shaft of darkness. Cables stretch into the abyss. There might be a smudge of light far, far above, or it might be the dulled glare of a cable.

“Are we going up?”

“Yes.” He cements his tail on the ground, acting like a third leg. “For reasons I’d rather not disclose, this is the only elevator to the Cap. I’ll try my best to make our trip run smoothly.”

“You’re going to move this thing?” But she shouldn’t be surprised. She’s seen crazier things.

“Ready.” And then Paranes’s eyes glow vermillion. Metal groans around them. The platform jerks, the barred walls bend, and Cora nearly wets herself.

Then the metal lurches upward. She stumbles and holds onto the metal bars comprising the walls, wind whipping her hair back and grit into her eyes. She screws them shut, legs buckling as the acceleration threatens to slam her to the ground.

“There,” Paranes says, at the same time the platform slows and stops at a new corridor. He pops open the door and gestures with a clawed, furry paw. Or hand. It’s hard to tell in the dark. “You may signal to me at any time at the Cap, and I will respond as soon as I can. I will warn you that you may be…” He flicks his tail around. “You’ll see. Best of luck, Cora.”

That is totally not suspicious. “See you, Paranes,” she says, taking the first step onto the corridor floor. She turns and waves a goodbye at him, whose ears perk up and his tail wags, before his eyes glow and the box drops back into the abyssal depths.

She stands at the mouth of a corridor lit by rings built into the brick walls. Like hollowed-out polka dots, they dot the ceiling, walls, and floor, though several long since died, leaving behind empty carcasses of metal and thick glass.

She ventures carefully down the corridor. The air chills. Her skin prickles. The corridor seems to go on forever, paradoxically, lights and brick reduced to a smear at the end. She walks until her feet ache, until her heart slams into her chest, until her light panting echoes down the corridor forever.

She should be worried. Paranes escorted her to a corridor that somehow stretches to infinity and left nonchalantly. When she turns back around, the abyssal elevator shaft is gone, and yet more corridor stretches in that direction.

But Cora has seen worse. Cenari makes sense for all the wrong reasons, and even a month’s worth of change and recovery inside its protective bubble failed to fully integrate into her thought processes. It did teach her some things, though. Magic, gifts, are common. If Eporsa, Callista, and everybody else hadn’t lied, gifts are ubiquitous across all worlds.

So a corridor stretching to infinity is normal. There are no mutant creatures hunting her down, no Transients fighting her, no gusts of freezing wind that turn her into an icicle. Sure, it’s cold, but that’s different from freezing.

A test, then. Maybe this is the governor’s way to screen threats. She drags her hand along the rings and bricks. The light rings are warm, and buzz against her hand, their illumination unwavering. The bricks are just that–bricks, rough and solid to the touch, unyielding beneath pressure.

If she stands on her toes and stretches her arm, she can graze the ceiling. She brushes solid stone and nothing else, cool to the touch. The floor is a checkered pattern of varying shades of gray and rings of light set into some of them. She walks toward a dead ring and touches it, and like the rest, is cold to the touch.

She follows the corridor for a few minutes, trying each surface with her hand, or tapping her foot on the rings. Nothing gives, nothing changes, except the pattern the rings are laid out in.

A message or cypher?

Cora squints. The details sharpen, but there is no broad stroke of genius clearing away her doubts. She unfocuses her eyes, and the result is worse, an incoherent mess of details.

“What the heck,” she mumbles, breath puffing out. It’s getting colder, but all the walking is keeping her nice and warm. She rears back and punches the wall. Hissing, she shakes her hand and nurses it to her chest, knuckles grazed bloody.

Paranes did say he’d come at her request.

“Okay, Paranes, don’t let me down.” Cora raises her head and bellows. “Paranes!”

Of course, the natural result is a reverberating echo of herself, going forever and ever. She winces and ducks her head.

He’ll come eventually. All she has to do is wait.

Less than a minute later, her teeth chatter. She starts walking again.

It could be a trap. Maybe they don’t trust her. Maybe whoever opens the box becomes a monster, and they decided the best way to dispose of her was to trap her in an infinite corridor, doomed to grace its bare floors.

“Is anybody there?”

Nobody responds. She’s not surprised, but the lack of response still makes her nervous. What if they trapped her? What if she can’t get out, ever, because they fear her somehow?

But they could’ve just killed her since the start. The logic doesn’t fit. It has to be a test, but if it is, she’s failing every step.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Unless… Cora shakes her head. The parasite is too risky, too dangerous, and absolutely stupid to try summoning. Can she even do that? Every violation of her mind happened through the parasite’s own will. It’s lodged like a piece of meat stuck between two teeth in her mind, and she can’t budge it at all.

No, it’s a dumb idea. Its power might crack through the illusion or physical corridor or whatever abomination the infinite corridor is, but no.

The answer slams into her all at once, and she shudders at the sheer simplicity of it. The walls are brick. The ceiling is stone. The floor is stone. The rings of light are made of metal and glass, but if she tried hard enough, she’s sure she could impose the gears of terrestrial reality on them, too.

That is, if she hadn’t pushed her metaphysical self to metaphysical death first.

“I figured it out.” She looks around, and nobody responds. Nothing shifts out of place, but she knows that she’s right. “You’re testing my gift to see if I’ll break out. Well, I hate to tell you this, but I can’t.”

Permissions are enabled.

The words come from everywhere. She recoils, raising her arm to fend off an invader that isn’t there. Not in the way that matters. The three words echo until they fade away.

“I can’t. I pushed myself too far and destroyed something, I think. I can’t use my gift again.”

That is impossible. Try.

Cora shudders. “I am!” She scrabbles to access that metaphysical plane, slip into her metaphysical self, and set the gears into motion. She hits a blank wall dividing reality from unreality. “I tried, but I can’t.”

Try.

A shudder runs through the corridor. One by one, the rings of light flicker and die. Glass bends and cracks beneath the crushing pressure of cylindrical stone pillars emerging. Only one light remains, and she’s standing right over it. It casts just enough light to produce a halo. Within the gloom, the bricks, ceiling, and floor writhe like carpets of snakes. Slowly, the ceiling bends low, the floor rises, and the walls close in.

“I can’t!”

Try.

“This is an illusion, right? I can’t do anything. Trust me.”

Try.

An illusion that feels very real. An illusion that left very real scrapes on her knuckles. The ceiling presses on her head, and she’s forced into a crouch, resting on the balls of her sore feet. The walls are narrowing, too. She can’t stretch horizontally, the distance not quite enough to lie down in.

“I can’t!”

Cora shivers. It’s just an illusion. The parasite tortured her with illusions. This is nothing different, cast by another, something she can get out of if she pushes in just the right direction.

She redirected the energy only inside her own head, because at the end the parasite operates off her own biofeedback. Reaching outward is different, because the energy comes from elsewhere, and as soon as she tries to detect the energy moving the corridor, she fails.

“Stop!”

She heaves. She unfolds and lies down vertically. Less than a foot of space separates her head from the encroaching ceiling. Inches of space remain at either side of her. She gulps and swallows a shaky breath that dies in her throat.

“If you’re trying to scare me, congrats, it worked.” Cora pants. She trembles, curling her hand into a fist, futilely pushing against the encroaching stone. “It worked! Get me out of here.”

Try.

The bricks brush against her arms and legs. She crosses her legs and drapes her arm over her chest. “Paranes!” The ceiling is close enough she can see the tiny pits and bumps on the stone. Then, it touches her nose, squishing it a little. She feels a heavy force press into her chest. “Paranes! Help!”

It’s just an illusion. It’s just an illusion. It’s just an illusion.

Her hips start to ache. The stone mercilessly presses inward, and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. Her nose slowly but surely is bending beneath the ceiling. It’ll have to break.

“Paranes!”

Paranes will not reach you in time. Try.

“I can’t!” she shrieks, her eyes tearing up. “I can’t!”

A shift measured in millimeters later, her nose breaks. The pain is sharp and lances into her face. She screams.

“Help! Help! Help!”

Her hips ache. Her shoulders are starting to be crushed inward. Her chest is aching, too, ribs gently protesting the immense weight on top of them. She shrieks and claws at her metaphysical self. The unreality rejects her desperate attempts and she’s thrust back into her body.

“Please! Stop!”

Deep within the folds of her brain tissue, a familiar, unwelcome presence stirs. It doesn’t suspend time or turn its cruel attention toward her. If she didn’t know better, she’d think the parasite didn’t care at all.

It does something to the intangible wall of reality and unreality, weakens its structural integrity. Just enough for Cora to find a weakness and pour her remaining strength into it.

The parasite fades into memory, but its lasting influence allows her to

Break

Through

And

Move.

Cora fights a current shoving her back into normal reality. She dives, twists, and inserts herself into the corpse of her metaphysical self. Her other body sustained wounds that would kill normal humans in seconds back in normal reality. Bones are shattered. Muscles are torn. Ligaments are snapped. Hands and feet are missing. She’s missing ears and an eye, the other bloodshot and rheumy, vision clouded. Her chest is caved in, gashes gouged into her abdomen, legs bruised and mottled gray. Patches of skin are cooked, others peeling off. Clumps of hair fall to the ground as she moves her head.

And it hurts. It shouldn’t hurt, but the damage is so vast and extensive it pierces deeper than any neuron. A dull ache envelops her, the pain of loss, of want for something more than... this.

Yet the gears remain inert. All she has to do is put them into motion, and insert will and intent.

Cora has two out of three finished. She’s willing to turn the gears and stop the corridors from crushing her into paste, but the gears don’t budge. She smashes a fractured elbow into the nearest gear and a deep throb pulses.

Her throat is a bloody ruin. Words come out in a wet gargle. Move! She tries her other elbow and wedges it between two gears, pushing. Her shoulder aches, a bone slips, and her arm flops uselessly at her side. Another slow, deep throb envelops her.

Please! The current wraps around her and tries to carry her back out. She clings to what remains of her metaphysical self, pleading to whatever cruel god or gods are out there to save her. Or let her save herself.

Just one more time. Of course, the world deigns to remain silent. She nudges her knee into a gear, and the metal bites into her sloughing skin and muscles. Bone, still solidly attached to the rest of her peeling body, slips between two gears. The next throb nearly knocks her unconscious. Through squinted eyes and a defiant scream hissed out a lipless mouth, she shifts a gear just enough and superimposes her will on it.

Move. Destroy. Find.

Her subconscious operates the rest. Cora is shunted out of the metaphysical plane into her very real body, and nearly blacks out from the very real pain.

Weeks of progress are unbound in an instant. Pores over her skin pop open. Skin peels away. The underlying muscle throbs, and she twitches, arms bending at odd angles, legs locking into a tight knot. But beyond her, stone and brick ripples outward, as if the architecture is convulsing, attempting to expel a foreign toxin.

Except she latches on. She directs the massive surge of energy to her will, to free herself from the caged-in box about to crush her. She shoves the pillars back into their rings. Bricks slot back into the walls. The floor flattens out, and the ceiling rises.

But Cora wants more than that. She wants to prove to herself that she can still fight. That what happened was real, but not irreversible. That she can find and rescue Mari, then go home, even if it’ll take a lifetime.

And that if push comes to shove, Cora won’t hesitate to destroy anybody who gets in her way.

She shunts the remaining energy to every crack in the corridor. The effect is instant–thousands of bricks break free and pulverize themselves into dust. The rings shatter. Crevices split the floor open. Cracks rocket across the ceiling, and sections break off, falling toward the floor.

Something else registers at the edge of her awareness. Another room, vast and dome-shaped, encloses the formerly sealed corridor. Several people shout at each other, summoning shields to block the spread of the cracks as they reach the room.

It’s too late. They wanted to kill her. Vaguely, she’s aware that her friends are somewhere far below her. Then she realizes they can run. It’s not like they won’t be warned from the palace shivering in anticipation.

It feels euphoric controlling so much, for so little. Her body is failing and wounds are opening everywhere, sure, but the strength that courses through her metaphysical fingertips is vast. The rush of power is addicting. With a flicker of thought and a few convulsions, she breaks past the shields and rushes up the dome.

It is so vast and so delicate, built using principles of engineering and affixed into place by dozens of miracle materials smashed together through genius invention and magic. Cora consumes its entirety and revels in how simple it would be to shift another gear and grip the dome, shattering it like an egg in her metaphysical fist, and reducing the people inside into mush.

But that’s too much effort for her failing body. She’s only human, and she’s starting to realize that her metaphysical self is connected to her real self, injuries included. If she wants to save Mari, Cora has to live, and if she has to live, she has to let go.

Reluctantly, she releases her grip on the dome. The shivering stops. The foundations creak as the materials settle back into place. People shout and summon more shields. They clump together like soap bubbles around the corridor, which she realizes stretches at most twenty feet before ending at a stairwell.

Or at least, it had stretched just shy of twenty feet. The walls and ceiling are currently heaps of powder on a gutted floor. The stairwell is a suggestion of itself, the bottom half blown off, the stone beneath carved out.

Did she do all that?

Cora looks around. She blew a crater where the corridor used to be. Compared to the dome, the crater is tiny, but it’s deep enough that light slants at an angle and strikes the upper half of the far wall. Most of the crater is plunged into shadow, including her, while lit faces peer over the edge, hesitant behind their shields.

“Stand down,” someone shouts. A crown of electricity dances around their head. “Do not summon your gift again, or you will be shot.”

Cora grimaces. She wipes at her nose. Her fingers come away sticky. “What is this, a bad cop show?”

“Stand down!”

“How can somebody stand down? On your head?” She’s woozy. She can barely stand, having to lean against a crater wall, while her vision swims. And yet, she relishes the attention. That rush of power… nothing compares to that. She was so close to crushing the dome like an eggshell. “You wanted to kill me!”

“You were never in danger.”

A new voice. High, trilling. Cora immediately hates it. The new arrival positions herself before all the soldiers. A Cenarian, fitted in a flowing red garment that sweeps around their legs. Unlike the rest, their mushroom cap is missing a section on the side, and puckered scars run down their face. Four of them, long and thin. Sparkling emerald eyes gaze back rather than the usual beady black eyes Cenarians have.

Oh. That’s because they hold a shield of her own, except it covers them from head to foot, and wraps around them like plastic wrap. Their garment moves of its own free will, flowing around their stocky figure. Another gift, then?

“I almost died,” Cora snarls. Her throat hurts from screaming. “You broke my nose.”

“That was a direct consequence of your reckless rampage. We never meant to harm you. It was a test designed to measure the extent of your purported gift. My soldiers had told me of your immense potential, but well…”

So that’s the governor. Nothing else needs to be said on that, at least.

“I was informed about the loss of your gift. I had never heard of a case like yours, so I designed this test to evoke a response. Of course, to ensure a maximum response, we used several gifts of illusions to convince you that you were in a life-threatening situation.” The governor pauses, glancing over the crater. At the cracks that spiderweb beyond the rim and run up the arches supporting the vast dome. “What we weren’t expecting was the sudden magnitude you escalated by. It shouldn’t be possible, not by normal grid standards. But I have a working hypothesis.”

“You’re not even gonna apologize?” Cora works her jaw and spits out a glob of bloody mucus. Her stomach is a bottomless pit yearning for more, to feel that awesome surge of power and control. Her heart aches, because she can’t get to live a normal life. “After doing that?”

“I will not apologize, because if we hadn’t tested you here first, you may have wiped Cenari off the coastline.”

“What?”

The governor raises an arm. His tendrils writhe, and his garment follows, slipping around his shoulders. “You aren’t alone, are you?”

Cora does her best to remain still. “What do you mean?”

“You came to speak with me about the box.” Now it’s the soldiers’ turn to look confused, glancing at the governor, who also remains still. Even the garment lies limp across his broad shoulders. “Something I do know is the attachment of an entity to the main user. Given sufficient time, the entity possesses the user and is driven to insanity.”

“You know.” Finally. Another who understands. Cora almost cries with relief, almost chooses to forget what happened and talk one-on-one with the governor.

Almost.

A faint nagging bothers her. The parasite’s influence? Cora combs her mind, but the energy is constant, belonging to her and her only. “But you said you weren’t expecting this magnitude of damage.”

“Yes, we weren’t. But well…” The governor’s garment flows around their torso. “Not enough is known about the entities that possess users. All the knowledge I have is anecdotal, at best. One theme they have is that the entity never helps a user. Ever. I hypothesized that a contradiction in internal matters diminishes a gift’s response, but if there is synchrony, then theoretically the response should be maximal. And well.”

“You weren’t worried about me? I was in the hospital for almost a month.”

“Yes, I was aware. I observed at a distance. The doctors there told me daily updates on your condition. Unlike every other user I am aware of, you recovered fairly well. When I heard of the loss of your gift, I had to determine if it was true. Which is why I tested you to gain data before a potential catastrophe could occur.”

That makes sense. Then again, Cora is too exhausted to parse out the details and form a logical conclusion. All she hears is that the governor sounds too much like a scientist rather than a politician, and he knows about the box and the parasite. A necessary evil she has to tolerate, if it means she finally gets answers.

“I hate that thing. I hate having it in my head,” she says. “It’s always there and I can’t get rid of it.”

The governor straightens his back. “Allow my healers to mend you. And then, we may talk in private.”