“IT’S ABSOLUTELY, MOST definitely, assuredly not time travel,”
Design explained to the two of them, resting her elbows on the bar.
“How do you know?” Painter asked.
“Because time travel into the past is impossible,” Design said. “I can show you the math.”
“Wait,” Yumi said. “Time travel into the future is possible?”
“Um, yes, dear,” Design said. “You’re doing it now.”
“Oh. Right.”
“We can slow or speed up time relative to other places or people,”
Design said. “That’s easier in the Spiritual Realm, where time flows like water into whatever container you provide. But you can’t go back.
Nobody, not even a Shard, can do that.”
“What’s a Shard?” Painter asked.
“Yeah, we’re not going to get into that,” Design said.
“Very well,” Yumi replied, “but many things I assumed impossible proved to be entirely possible recently. So perhaps something is happening that you don’t know about, Design.”
The buxom woman—well, entity—sighed. “You need proof, eh? All right, let’s read your aura, little girl.” She ducked down and began fiddling with things under the counter.
“Read my aura?” Yumi whispered, leaning over to Painter.
“It’s a carnival thing,” he explained. “Izzy loves readings. You know how she’s always trying to use dramas to guess what people’s futures are? It’s like that. Old lady sits in a room and squints at you, then tells you what kind of job you’ll like. It’s…mostly nonsense.”
Design popped back up and thumped a large piece of equipment onto the bar. A black box with some kind of…glass portion on top?
Like a viewer?
“Is this normally part of it, Painter?” Yumi asked.
“I’ve…never seen it done like this before…” he said as Design took Yumi’s hand and put it onto the glass plate.
A customer came up for food, and Design shooed him away. When he didn’t leave, she stood up tall and snapped, “What? Can’t you see that I’m talking to a ghost and reading his girlfriend’s spiritweb? Go sit in the storming corner until I’m ready for you.”
The man frowned and trailed away. Painter, however, was shocked.
Girlfriend?
“Took me longer to find this thing than I wanted,” Design said.
“Hidden among all his junk. Guy needs a sorting system.” (I have one. It’s called my brain.) Design moved some dials, then hooked the machine up to the bar’s hion lines for power. While he waited, Painter reached over and took the spirit of Yumi’s soup, pulling it in front of him. He got two bites before it evaporated. He didn’t get hungry while a ghost, but he did miss Design’s cooking.
“Okay,” Design eventually said as something began to glow inside the box. “This fabrial will give a far more accurate reading of your spiritweb than I can on my own. Let’s see…” She leaned back, frowning, then leaned forward again, studying some…were those words? The waving lines that appeared on a smaller plate at the
side?
“Huh,” Design said.
“What?” Yumi and Painter said in unison.
“The readings are going haywire,” Design said, “because you’re highly Invested. Like, super Invested.”
Painter blinked. Then waited for more. Then looked to Yumi, who shrugged.
“Storms,” Design said. “Yeah, this is like… Returned-level Investiture. No, more. Elantrian-level. The device isn’t built for that kind of reading—and you’re screwing with the system something crazy. It’s kind of fun. Oooh. I wonder if you’ll explode when you die.”
“What?” Yumi yelped.
“Highly unlikely,” Design said. “But possible!” She grinned. “This is awesome.”
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Painter said.
“Investiture is what souls are made out of,” said Design. “Well, everything is Investiture—because matter, energy, and Investiture are the same. But souls, as you’d call them, are parts of our beings that are pure Investiture. Like…fire is energy. This table is matter. Souls?
Investiture.”
“And Yumi’s spirits?”
“Likely Investiture too,” Design said. “I haven’t met them, so I can’t say. But the nightmares are. Pure Investiture. They’re probably terrified of you, Yumi.”
“We’ve met several,” Yumi said. “And they were very not afraid of me.”
“Well, they should have been,” Design said. “You could maybe consume them, at least screw with them in all kinds of fun ways.
Investiture—raw Investiture in particular—is kinda wahoopli.”
“…Wahoopli?” Painter said.
“Word I just made up,” Design said. “It means weird. Hoid says I should be more literary. He makes up words all the time. So I’m trying it out.” (I do not make up words. I have no idea where she was getting that part.) “Anyway, raw Investiture,” Design said, “responds to thoughts.
Emotions. Especially the thoughts and emotions of heavily Invested beings. Painter, when you paint nightmares, it’s your thought—your perception of them—that causes them to transform. It’s not the actual painting. They can literally become anything, and because of that
they have a weakness. Through concentration, you can force them to become what you envision.”
“Huh,” Painter said, shocked by how much sense that made to him.
Considering how conversations with Design often went.
“Regardless, back to Yumi…” Design said, squinting—not because she needed to, but because she was picking up human mannerisms. (Which was, I can proudly say, part of the point of making her “human” in the first place.) “Yumi, have you experienced any memory loss lately?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “Should I have?”
“It’s difficult to read your spiritweb,” Design said. “You glow like a bonfire, girl. Obscures a lot of things—but I do see an excision here.
Some of your memories have been bled away.”
Both of them again stared at her blankly.
“Everyone imprints memories in their Investiture,” Design said. “It’s why a Cognitive Shadow remembers everything the body did, if the body dies? Storms, you people don’t know anything. Look, in highly Invested individuals in particular, memories get spread through your whole soul, okay? And you’ve lost some. They were cut out. Not many. Maybe a day’s worth? Hard to see details, though the scar is right here.”
“I…got touched by that stable nightmare,” Yumi said. “It seemed to drain something from me. Maybe that was it?”
“That sounds reasonable,” Design said, then clapped once, loudly.
“All right, done. No more data here. I could stare all day and get nowhere. Like trying to understand one of Hoid’s more obtuse jokes.” (Completely uncalled-for.) “You,” Design said, gesturing at Painter as she shoved Yumi’s hand off the machine. “Your turn.”
“Me?” Painter said, feeling threatened. “I’m not real! I mean, I don’t have a body.”
“This thing reads souls,” she said, pointing.
Reluctantly—but unwilling to appear cowardly in front of Yumi—he put his hand on the machine. He wasn’t sure if it was because he expected it or for some other reason, but he could touch the cool plate on the top of the device.
Design watched the vibrating lines on the side. “Ha!” she said, turning so he could see them better. “See?”
“I can’t read that, Design,” he said.
“You’ve got a normal soul’s worth of Investiture,” Design said.
“Exactly the level we’d expect for this planet, which has no Shard in residence and where the people haven’t been specifically granted extra. Shroud and Splinters of Virtuosity notwithstanding.”
“Again,” Painter said, keeping his hand on the device, “Shard?
Splinter? Virtuosity?”
“Still not getting into it,” Design said. “Regardless, I see no evidence of Connection to the past in your spiritweb. Nikaro, you— absolutely, assuredly, conclusively—have not been time traveling.
This is definite.”
“Do I have a Connection to another world?” Painter asked. “Can you read that?”
“Neither of you,” she said, “have been traveling to other worlds.
You’re from this planet, both of you. I can see that easily. Though… Yumi has fewer Connections to other people than I’d expect. That’s not related to her power; it feels more like…”
“Like I don’t know anyone?” she whispered.
“Yeah, that!” Design said. “Never seen a person with so few Connections. You’re a very private individual, I take it.”
“Yes,” she said, looking down.
“I wonder what that’s like,” Design said. “But I don’t wonder it enough to try it.”
“How did you see her Connections to others?” Painter said. “I thought you said you couldn’t read her well.”
“I could see that,” Design said, rolling her eyes as if they were supposed to understand why. “She’s Connected to you, obviously. I could see that without the device. And a few others. Then there are these thirteen odd lines…”
“Thirteen?” Yumi said, standing up from her stool.
“Yup!” Design said. “Connection lines are easy to see at times, but notoriously hard to read. I don’t know what these are Connected to.
Didn’t look like family though. More a thematic Connection…”
“Yumi?” he asked.
“There are currently thirteen other yoki-hijo,” Yumi said. “Where?
Where are they?”
“I can’t read that,” Design said.
“Then what good is this?” Yumi said, gesturing to the device.
“What good is… Yumi, do you understand what a miracle this fabrial is? It’s reading things that until very recently you’d need a highly specialized individual who could—”
“Are they here?” Yumi asked. “This world. Nearby?”
“Definitely this world,” Design said. “That direction, somewhere.”
She waved vaguely to the west, toward the near portion of the shroud where Painter patrolled. “But…” She sighed as Yumi dashed from the building.
Painter scrambled to follow, caught off guard. “Yumi?” he shouted, stumbling out onto the street. “Yumi. You promised the others you’d stay away from…”
She was running down the street and seemed not to be listening.
He took off after her, catching up, then joined her as she eventually emerged from the outer ring of warehouses onto the road that circled Kilahito. She slowed here, walking up to the shroud—dangerously close.
“Yumi?” Painter said, approaching from behind, and reached out— but stopped just short of touching her.
Finally she sank to her knees and bowed her head. He walked around to her side and crouched there, worried.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I thought… Actually, I wasn’t thinking. I felt. That I wanted to see them. Be with them. It overcame me.” She looked at him. “I knew one of them, when I was a child. We were
trained together. Did you know that?”
He shook his head.
“Then they took her, separated us,” Yumi whispered, “when we were growing to know each other too well. Wasn’t good for me, Liyun said, to form an attachment. In the years since, I’ve never met another one of them.”
“What, really?” he said. “Not even in passing?”
She shook her head.
“That feels tragic,” he said, settling down beside her and staring at the shroud. Black on black. He knew it was shifting and moving, but
he felt it more than he saw it.
“How did you deal with the loneliness?” she asked softly. “When
you were younger?”
“By painting.”
“When you make art,” she whispered, “it’s easy to forget.”
“Until you don’t have anyone to show it to.”
“I never had that problem,” she said. “But my audience was never human. I often wished that after it was all done for the day, someone would be there to tell me I’d done a good job.”
“Hey,” he said.
She glanced at him.
“Good job.”
“I didn’t mean right now,” she said (lowly).
He grinned at her anyway. And eventually she grinned back. Then she idly picked up a few pebbles and broken cobbles from the ground. Unsurprisingly, she began stacking them.
“We’re missing today’s episode of Seasons of Regret,” she said. “I didn’t even remember. Considering all the…”
“Insanity?”
“Yeah,” she said, balancing another pebble.
“Ask Izzy,” he said. “She’ll know what happened. And will explain.
In detail.”
“I almost…” she said, balancing a fourth pebble, “would rather not.
I’d rather imagine it for myself. So I can pretend it turned out happy in the end.”
Painter glanced to the side. This wasn’t the best place for a conversation. At the very least, they risked running into Akane and
Tojin, who would never let Yumi… He frowned, then stood up.
The shroud was changing. Rippling. He almost shouted for Yumi to run, thinking a nightmare was coming out. But then the shroud drew back. Away from them.
Like darkness before light. Like water evaporating before a terrible heat. The shroud retreated in a kind of curve, bowing inward. He glanced at Yumi, who stacked another pebble.
The shroud pulled back farther.
“Yumi!” he hissed, then pointed.
She followed his gaze, then gasped softly. “What is happening?”
“The stacking,” he said. “The shroud is responding to the stacking.”
To test this, she placed another—and the shroud pulled back more.
It was responding only in a small region, maybe ten feet across. But Painter found the behavior bizarre—until he realized there was an obvious correlation.
“That’s how it responds to hion lines,” he said, looking toward Yumi.
“It’s how we survive; hion pushes back the shroud. We build new settlements by extending the lines into the dark.”
Yumi selected another handful of pebbles from around the area, then settled herself with a determined expression, stacking one after another, working faster than he’d have dared. Not a single one of her miniature towers toppled. Behind them, he noticed Design approaching, still wearing her apron. It was an odd sight, and he realized he had basically considered her to be a fixture of the restaurant—seeing her was like seeing the bar itself rip up and come sauntering out onto the street.
Design wordlessly joined them, watching the shroud. The darkness lurched with each pebble, but then started to churn and bubble, like water boiling.
“Yumi…” Painter said at this new behavior. “Maybe…”
She increased her speed, building with both hands, growing her towers higher, higher, making the shroud churn and froth and agitate and ripple, then split. Right down the center, revealing a human hand, then shoulders and a face—a woman, dressed in the bright tobok of a yoki-hijo—reaching out to them with a voiceless scream. The shroud surged forward again, swallowing her, then bulged out toward the three of them.
Painter yelled and leaped back. Yumi scattered rocks in her haste to get away. Even Design—who had long claimed to be some kind of immortal unaffected by common fears—scuttled away until all three of them pressed their backs to the nearest wall: Painter’s whitewashed but unpainted one.
“What (lowly) was that?” Painter demanded.
“Your world is really weird,” Design said. “I have a number to explain how weird. It’s high. Super high.”
“That was a yoki-hijo,” Yumi whispered, looking at them both. “In
the darkness. Why?”
Painter shook his head, baffled.
“Could be a nightmare,” Design said. “Taking the shape of a person —because you were thinking about them. Don’t trust anything you see made from that darkness, kids.”
“Good point,” Painter said. “This could be some kind of trap. Even if it’s not, isn’t this a distraction right now? The other yoki-hijo are on your mind, Yumi, but what would they want you to do?”
“To follow the will of the spirits,” Yumi said. “The scholars’ machine —we have to figure out how to destroy it.”
“I suggest hitting it,” Design said. “Very hard. Preferably with something that is more hard. I’d offer myself, as I make an encouragingly mediocre sword, but there are…complications.”
“We could just use a rock,” Painter said. “Stalk in there and hit the machine while the scholars are confused. What are they going to do?
They’re a bunch of spindly academics.”
Yumi looked horrified. “I couldn’t do that!”
“You wouldn’t have to,” Painter said, glancing back at the shroud— which was stilling. In mere seconds, it appeared identical to how it had before. “I can destroy the machine, Yumi. Maybe that’s why the spirits sent for me. They need someone who doesn’t care about your society’s rules. Someone who can simply walk into that tent and do what has to be done.”
“Maybe,” Yumi admitted. “But we don’t move in haste. We should plan first.”
Of course she wanted to plan. “Yumi, you said this is getting worse.
You said our time was running out. I don’t think we’re going to be able
to come up with a better plan than just sneaking in and smashing the machine. We aren’t soldiers; we have no resources.”
“You could be right,” she said. “But I can’t help thinking we should go into this with more information. Design, you surveyed this world before you landed. How sure are you it was all covered in the
shroud?”
“Not that sure,” she replied.
“Do you have maps?” Yumi asked. “A way to tell what’s out there in that darkness?”
“I don’t,” Design said. “But…I might know someone who can tell us.
Someone who has traveled it extensively.”
