Seele Vollerei: The end of reality, and what came after.

[Baughn]

Later, you decide.

There's a lot of reasons you don't want to open the sphere. The chance it's holding something dangerous. The possibility that time dilation will trap you for decades. The fear that, while you're playing around in here, more people will die elsewhere. They're all true, but..

To be honest?

You're just creeped out.

The two of you move around the sphere, looking for any button, lever, anything that could tell you what's going on.

There's nothing. Just the altar, and that's wood. Pure wood, nothing special about it. Simple, polished wood. Elegant in its simplicity, but it doesn't seem to be there for a *reason*. The sphere, you're pretty sure, would float on its own without it. The altar serves no purpose. It just is.

Which makes you wonder, of course. You know you'll be back. Just... not now.

"Let's go," you say. "There's nothing here."

Vel nods, and you walk out of the room. You pass through the entry chamber, walk up the short flight of stairs, and out of the sensor section. The massive steel door is still open from when you first came in; the sensors worked enough to open it up, but not enough to close it. Of course. You head back outside, without a word.

Part of you wonders if you should split up. You'd certainly cover more ground like that, but... ah... it would feel wrong, you think. Almost like tearing your personal timeline in half. Both things you can do, in theory, but neither... fit your personality. You and Vel are a team. Whether that's for safety, or because you've been stuck together so long, or fear of what will happen if the weather changes... or maybe it's just because you're used to her.

Maybe it's because she's Vel. You asked Theresa to pretend she's just your sister, and that's not... that's not exactly true, but...

Vel must have similar thoughts; she doesn't leave your side as you head onwards to the mess hall and dormitory. The mess hall is empty, and the dorm is... well, empty too. The beds are still neatly made, as if everyone had just gotten up and walked out of the room. A 'gone fishing' sign, except for real. Your heart sinks a bit at this sight.

Vel spends her time walking the perimeter, while you search the dormitory. Finally, you meet up back in the mess hall.

"This waypoint is pretty big," she says. "I'm betting most of the people here got evacuated."

"It's not the evacuation I'm worried about. It's what happens afterwords." You open a refrigerator, Vel right behind you. "Do you think...?"

"That we're too late?" Vel says. "It's possible. There's a few places we can check, but... we're in a time crunch here. They could all be dead already."

Someone's taken most of the food. Not all of it, but all of the perishables. You pick up a pack of juice, then think better of it and put it back. Best save the food for people who need it.

Vel shuts the refrigerator door. "We should try somewhere else."

"Yeah..." You sigh. "The dormitories, again? Section B?"

"If we're lucky, someone's hiding out." Vel pauses. "I... didn't think it'd feel this depressing. Everyone's gone. Well, not everyone, but..."

"Not everyone." You think about Kiana, and Theresa. About Siegfried, even though you hadn't met him before. He seems nice. About Otto, who is either the most dedicated or the most masochistic person you've ever known. That's the only explanation you can give for why he's sticking around this many people who hate him.

"Let's check the armory." Vel sounds dejected.

You go back to the dormitory, opening the door to a large weapons stockpile. Rows and rows of guns, grenades, rockets... everything you could ever need for a war. You frown.

"Why the hell do we have a stockpile this big, anyway?" You ask. Vel looks at you as if the answer should be obvious.

"For the apocalypse, of course."

You laugh. "Right. Well, I guess it's good that we have this for... fighting quantum beasts that can't be hurt by normal weapons." You try not to think about the amount of fear this stockpile inspires in you.

No people, of course. There's no people anywhere.

You head back to the cafeteria, Vel by your side. She looks at you, and smiles a little.

"I think I..." she pauses. "I'm glad we got to meet each other."

You smile back, and put your hand on hers. "Me too."

This is the way it should be. You and your sister, protecting each other. Keeping each other sane.

Something occurs to you. "Waypoint?" You ask.

Vel blushes. "It's from a game Bronya was playing with Mei and Kiana. Something about a world where, instead of distance, places were separated by... how did she put it? Narration. You can move normally inside a waypoint, but not between them. It's not a great match, but different places on the ship aren't connected normally either, and I figured we need a term for it."

"That's... actually pretty clever."

BGM

Vel smiles. "Let's go."

"Yeah..." You nod, and your eyes catch something on the floor. Footprints, in the omnipresent dust. Fresh ones, going off to... "Wait. Tracks. Someone's over here."

You follow the tracks. They lead you out of the cafeteria, to a corridor that's chock-full of spatial faults.

"That's..." you say.

Weird. Strange. Impossible.

There are thousands of rifts here. The corridor is full of them, stretching as far as you can see -- but somehow, the tracks dance between them. That's not something a normal human should be able to do. You? You can go through them, but any normal person who did that would be torn to pieces.

Whoever left the tracks hasn't, though. Hasn't gone through them, and hasn't been torn apart. They've just... gone between them, dancing between rifts they shouldn't be able to see.

Weird.

"Come on, let's go!" you say to Vel, excitement in your voice. There's someone alive on this ship. There has to be. Vel nods, and you follow the tracks.

The footprints lead to another part of the ship. You go through more corridors, and then...

You hear voices in the distance. You slow down, and edge forward. You hear... Singing?

"Oh, I come from Alsace, a region of France," you hear someone sing in a heavy German accent.

"I lead a band of mercenaries, my name is Hans mein friend," the voice continues.

"I am a creature of legend, they call me the quantum Werewolf."

A younger, higher voice cuts in. "That's Herr Röt, and I am his faithful hound, Féval."

"We fight the creatures of darkness, so innocent souls are avenged!"

You run down the corridor, making a racket that could probably wake the dead.

"We search the land for monst..." the German voice stops suddenly.

"Hey! Don't stop singing," the girl says. You think you..

Yes. You recognize her. You'd recognize her anywhere. *Especially* singing.

"Roza!" You shout, sprinting down the corridor. You take the corner at a run, nearly overbalancing as you burst into another office section. It's... cubicles, except someone's torn down most of the cubicles and built a shelter from the dividers. In the middle, five adults in clerk uniforms, and--

There she is. Standing with a man, who looks to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He's tall and strong looking, with short blond hair and a bushy beard. He's wearing a red hoodie, with paw prints on the arm and chest.

The girl next to him is much shorter, dressed in a green and yellow jacket, and has long pink hair, a horn and a tail. It's Rozaliya.

It's really Roza.

She's alive.

You don't know whether to laugh or cry. You just sprint over to her, grabbing her in a hug as she lets out a little yelp of surprise.

"Seele! What are you doing here?" She asks.

You look up at her, grinning like an idiot, eyes shining with tears. Veliona is looking at the cubicle-shelter, where... oh... it's Liliya. She's just exiting, her eyes wide like saucers.

"Roza, who... Seele?" She asks. "Seele, is that really you? What are you doing here?"

"Rescuing you!" you say, beaming. You release Rozaliya, smiling as Lili hugs you. Veliona stands there awkwardly.

"Er... there's two of you?" Rozaliya says.

"I can explain," you say.

"We'd be here awhile," Veliona says, sighing.

Yeah, no time for that.

"...she's my evil twin," you claim.

"I'm her smart twin," Veliona says.

"She's also a voice in my head," you say. "Roza, Liliya, meet Veliona."

"Nice to meet you," Veliona deadpans.

"Are there any more of you?" Roza asks.

You look around. Everyone here is hanging on to your words, their eyes filled with hope.

"Yeah," you say. "Theresa made it, as did everyone else on the bridge. Tesla's working in engineering, and Kiana is trying to fix the corridors so we can get around. We're out searching for survivors, like you, to make sure you'll be okay until we can get you out of here. Things got pretty wonky, huh?"

"You could say that," she nods. "Have you found anyone else?"

You shake your head. "You're the first... but, we haven't been at this for long! This is the second place we checked, pretty much. There's tons of other places to search."

She nods, and you see her visibly relax. "That's good. I was worried... but if you're here, I know everything will be okay."

You smile. "Of course it will. We've got to keep going, but is there anything you need right now?"

"And how long have you been here?" Veliona interjects. "How long since the world ended?"

"The... five days, I think," she says. "I don't know, there was no way to tell time..."

Her voice trails off. She stares at you, and you realize she's on the edge of tears.

"We're getting you out of here," you say. "We just need to find everyone, and..."

Her eyes glisten as tears run down her cheek. "And what? Please, just tell me the truth... what's going on? What happened to us? What do you mean, 'end of the world'?"

Oh. Oh no.

= = =

I love these two. They're always fun, and the comedy always brightens the mood.

Except when it doesn't.

You can take it as given that Seele will do whatever is necessary to keep them safe and healthy until Kiana can get to them. If there's anything else you'd like to do before moving on, do a write-in.

[ ] Tell them the (brutal) truth.
[ ] Try to lighten the blow.
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

Where do you even start?

You take a deep breath. "I..." You pause, trying to start again. Your voice cracks as you continue. "Vel and I... We tried to save the world."

You choke up. Roza and Lili stare at you blankly.

"What... what happened?" She asks.

You take a deep breath, trying to collect your thoughts. You don't... remember. Theresa should know, or Kiana, but you didn't ask and they didn't volunteer. Kiana's reaction was enough to kill any thought of doing so.

That was a mistake. It means you've never confronted reality.

"Bronya and Mei were there as well," you say, "I, she... they... I'm..." You squeeze your eyes shut, and try to force out the words, but they won't come. They're stuck somewhere in your throat, refusing to move.

"Seele?"

Rozaliya's voice seems to come from far away. The world is blurry. Your chest hurts.

"I'm sorry," you say, "I thought I could... I'm so sorry."

You don't remember collapsing, but you must have. Rozaliya catches you, and you can't stop crying long enough to figure out the situation. You just cry and cry, clutching at her.

"Seele?" She asks again. You sense Liliya holding you as well, but it's a distant feeling.

You shake your head, as if that could get rid of the thoughts. You've spent all your time trying to ignore it, but Bronya is... Bronya...

"Bronya is dead," Vel says, her voice cold. "We failed. We lost. The world ended. I nearly died. Seele came a lot closer."

You manage to open your eyes, looking appealingly at her. She stares blankly at the three of you. No tears, no emotion. She doesn't know what to do or say. Slowly, she turns her gaze away from you, leaning against the wall and staring forward.

"Vel?" you say.

She twitches in response to your voice, but keeps looking away.

"Vel?" you ask, a little louder this time.

She stands there, completely motionless, staring forward. Then, she shudders.

"I... I can't..." she says, her voice breaking. "I can't."

She sinks down into the ground, curling up. Her eyes are open, but they're glazed over, staring into the distance. She's shaking all over. You reach out to touch her shoulder, and she twitches again, recoiling.

"Vel, it's me..." you whisper.

She says nothing. You lean in further, pressing your hand against her shoulder.

"Vel?" you ask again. You grip her shoulder firmly, trying to shake her from her trance.

She snarls, batting your arm away. Then, she gasps. Her eyes grow wide and she stares directly at you.

"Seele?" she asks.

You hear a sigh of relief from Liliya, but pay it no heed. You wrap your arms around Veliona, and her arms close around you as well. The two of you embrace, tears streaming from your eyes. You hold each other for a long time, not daring to let go.

"Seele... I wasn't supposed to miss her this much," she sobs.

"I know, Vel. I know."

It's some time before you recover from the ordeal.

Liliya stares at the two of you, her lips quivering as she fights back tears of her own. Rozaliya isn't much better. This is... this is probably not the best way you could have broken the news to them. Still, you have to continue.

"The world ended seven days ago," you say, in a defeated tone. You're not fighting back tears anymore, you just feel numb. Vel's touch helps, but it'll be awhile before you're yourself again. "The sky tore open..."

You're not sure why you say that. It's just an impression you have. Infinite honkai beasts pouring in, all under the command of the final Herrscher.

"There's nothing outside the Hyperion," Vel says, taking over. "Just... nothingness. We're right where we were, but it's part of the quantum sea now. Tesla's invention broke, I think, but it kept some of us alive."

She struggles for words. Liliya just shakes her head in dismay.

"No... there's no way... Everyone..." Liliya shakes her head. "The... the world?"

You can't think of anything to say, so you hug her. Rozaliya joins in, tears streaming down her face. Vel hugs all three of you. Her eyes are wild, like something's broken inside her. You can't really say you blame her.

You… you definitely need to have that talk with her.

You don't have much time to dwell on it or anything else, because a voice suddenly cuts through the silence. It's so sudden that you jump, almost letting go of each other.

It's the german-sounding guy who was singing with Rozaliya.

"I can't say I'm surprised," he says. "I'd like to introduce myself. I am Hans Hirsch. I am... an accountant," he says, dramatically. "The twins have been keeping us sane and fed, but I think we were all expecting bad news. At least you're here now. I guess there's some hope."

What a strange guy, you think.

"Hope for what?" you ask, before Vel or Rozaliya can say anything.

"Hope that we'll see the sky again. Hope that we can defend this ship from whatever might attack us. Hope that this hellish nightmare will end," Hans says, spitting on the floor. "None of us signed up because we were quitters, and I assume neither are you. If the world is gone, let's find another. If the ship is broken, let's repair it. If there's an enemy, let's kill them. We're survivors. So let's survive."

"Easier said than done," Rozaliya says weakly. "The world... it's not just dead, anymore. It's gone."

The mood is dampened once again. You look at each other, thinking the same thing. What are you going to do?

You could try Hans' plan...

"It might be possible," you say cautiously. "I mean, there are other worlds. I've seen them. And I think Hans has a point. No-one here is a quitter. I... I think we should try."

Veliona grins.

"But how?" Roza asks. "Please tell me you know how."

"I don't have a plan, but..." You collect your thoughts, trying to explain. "This isn't the first time I've been stuck here. You know I was trapped in the quantum sea after the X-10 experiment, right? I never told you much about it, but I'm sure I mentioned that much. Didn't want to think about it, to be honest."

"How could I forget," Liliya says, looking away. "Bronya cried for days. So did Rozaliya."

"So did you! I remember you crying in your sleep," Roza says accusingly.

"Shut up, I did not!" Liliya protests.

"Girls..." Hans says.

You take a deep breath. "Right. It was awful. There's no stars here. No light. I wasn't floating in a void; there isn't a void. Nothing but my own thoughts... and Veliona. If it hadn't been for her..."

You're shivering. All these thoughts... you'd written them down, yes. You even told Bronya, at least implicitly. You've never told anyone else before, and you didn't ever want to. But you have to be strong. You can cry later.

Rozaliya is on the edge of tears again, so you smile at her.

"The point is, we got out of there," you say. "We made it back to reality. I had help from Mr. Welt and Bronya, but we have so much more now. Theresa is here, and Kiana. So is Tesla, and the entire Hyperion, and maybe hundreds of other people. And when Bronya rescued me, that was after I'd already learned to get around, a little. I've seen a lot, even some small worlds that got stuck here, same as me. None of them were stable, but..."

You look into all of their faces.

"We have a chance. We're going to get out of here. Maybe we'll find a little world to settle down on together. Maybe we'll even make one. Kiana's already built an entire island! It's far too early to give up, I mean." You sigh. "I'm sorry, I'm not myself right now. It's been an emotional couple of days."

"You're doing great," Hans says.

He said he's an accountant, right? Somehow, when you picture accountants, you don't picture...

No. Focus, Seele. Fucking focus.

"Just, first we need to fix the ship. Hans was right, and that's why I'm here. I mean, that's why Tesla and Kiana are here. I'm on search and rescue. Looking for people like you. Which reminds me, are any of you engineers?"

You get two nods. One of them, a young woman in a hoodie and with a notebook in her hand raises her hand.

"Um, 'engineer' isn't a profession. I'm a nuclear physicist."

"Oh. Um, OK. Sorry."

"No, it's fine. I'm an engineer. Why?" she asks.

You look at her.

A nuclear... physicist. Well, that's...

"Do you know how honkai reactors work?" you ask.

She nods.

"Yeah, I designed a few workarounds for the, uh, ship. The reactors are all supposed to be identical, but they're really not."

"I'm an electrical engineer," the man standing next to her volunteers.

You smile and turn to him.

"Perfect! Can you do basic maintenance? There was a big fire in one of the reactors."

There's a moment of silence. The woman pales somewhat.

"I can try."

"Great!" You clap your hands. "That's just what we need. I need to get you to Tesla, and then... hmm."

Then she'll have some help, but...

"Sounds great," Rozaliya says, somewhat dubiously. "But can you do that? Get us out of here, I mean?"

Actually, you don't know if you can.

You hesitate for a moment, then take a deep breath.

= = =

This one's partially beta'd by @ShadowAngelBeta. Oh, and I found a reasonably approachable article about GPT-3. I'd read it before, but I don't think I ever mentioned it here.

At this point I think it's about 75% me, 25% AI, but that's the exact 25% that otherwise stalls me out. It's well worth it.

Originally those dice rolls were for what will happen in the next update, but I decided they'd do better picking the results for this one. Which means I'll need another, please. Anyway, you had decent rolls. So:

[ ] Leave them be for now
[ ] Fetch Kiana
[ ] Attempt to build a path yourself, even if it isn't pretty
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

Yvette's corner

Hello, Yvette. It's the author again. Long time no see. Again, I'm sorry about how this turned out. If you're reading this, it means you're dead, and unfortunately for you, that also means you're stuck here. I don't have much to say. I mean, you know it all already. You were a good person, and you died because of a fundamental problem with the universe.

This is non-canon, so please feel free to tell me off. At any rate... while I'm doing research for the next chapter, I thought I'd get your opinion on the story so far. What do you think of Seele, now you've seen a little more of her? What parts were good, what parts weren't? What could I have done better? Feel free to criticize.

"Seriously?"

I'm not bullshitting. I was up till two in the morning finishing the last chapter. Of course, I know I could do better, but I think it turned out well.

Yvette, you're a sweet girl, and I'm sorry. I have this entire bio written up for you. The plan wasn't... well, never mind.

Anyway.

How was this chapter?

"Pretty good. The twins seem like they'd be really fun at parties."

I'm glad you approve.

"I do."

Well, you wouldn't be the first to say that about them. They're a little more fragile than they look, but Seele already lost one childhood friend. She'd have been absolutely crushed if she lost the others.

"The notes say you cried a lot when writing this."

Well, that's... heh, that was an instruction to the AI. I find it works much better than simply telling it to make the scene depressing. I'm letting it do the writing for you, so it's funny you should bring that up.

"Oh?"

You know that thing you're doing right now? The thing where you pause mid-conversation to see how I'll respond?

"Yeah?"

...

That's what I did, when I was writing the story. Essentially, that's how you make best use of this AI. Give it just enough of a paragraph to let it know what you're going for, have it write the rest. I'm never sure how smart it really is, but it did write the entire rest of this paragraph, this entire explanation, so it isn't dumb.

Maybe it's just really good at responding to implicit commands.

Either way, the chapter's done. I'm a little tired, and next up is a quantum collapse. I'm going to leave the meaning of that to your imagination, but it's going to be a long one. I also think this story needs a little more backstory, and Vel is going to give it to you.

One of these days you'll be back in the story, Yvette. Doesn't that sound like fun?

"Sorry, the next chapter is a what?"

You don't need to worry about that. You won't be resurrected until much later. That's next chapter. For now, you're going to have to get used to Vel's company. You'll be learning a lot about how the world works through her eyes, so don't neglect it.

"I thought I was the main character."

I have no idea where you'd even get that idea. You're a bit inessential to the story. Your personality is rather blank, and your utility is in question. You're basically a plot coupon.

I'm sorry if that hurts you, but that's just how it is. You can't win them all. You shouldn't take this too personally. I did write down a bio, you know. You'll have a chance to overcome your origins.

"I know, I just wish..."

I don't like leaving characters like that. You'll overcome your limitations. Just trust me, and pay attention to what happens.

There will be a test.

 

[Baughn]

You hesitate for a moment, then take a deep breath.

"I think so," you say. "I mean, probably. I... I've watched Kiana, and I've done some odd things before, and... if it's just flattening out rifts, I think I can do it. So long as there are no intrusions from other worlds there. That's when it gets complicated."

"It sounds dangerous," Roza says.

Yeah. It does.

"It's not... really," you say, ducking your head. "I'm hard to hurt. You know, the maintenance corridor you've been using to scavenge for food?"

Rozaliya nods.

"I guess you can sense the rifts somehow, right? Maybe..."

"They make me feel nauseous," Rozaliya says.

"Well, anyway..." You hesitate again, but this is Rozaliya. One of your best and oldest friends. There's nothing you need to hide from her. "I can just go through them. Even if the worst happens, I... I'd just get kicked out into the sea. I'm mostly not here, even right now."

Rozaliya winces.

"That sounds really dangerous."

You nod.

"A little, but... It won't kill me. I have to try. I'm not just going to sit here while everything falls apart."

Rozaliya sighs, then wraps her arms around you in a hug.

"Be careful," she says. "You still haven't seen our show, and I don't want to perform for an empty hall. Honkai beasts aren't a good audience. If we lost you too, then... then..."

Her speech started off as an attempted joke, but it slowly collapses into a sob halfway through. You pat her on the back, and look over at Liliya.

Her eyes are fixed on the ground, apparently studying the metal plating of the floor. She looks uncomfortable, shifting from one foot to another. Her tail twitches a little. Rozaliya looks at her as well, her eyes widening, then sighs and look away. You're about to say something, but Liliya beats you to it.

"I'm coming with you," she says. "I don't want to be left behind either."

"...it's dangerous," you say. "It'd be a lot more dangerous for you than me."

"I don't care. If something happened to you, I... I..."

You sigh, and look pleadingly at Rozaliya.

"I'm coming too," she says. "Obviously."

"No you aren't!" you snap. "There's no way I'm putting you in that kind of danger."

"Like she said, if something happened to you, I'd just... I'd..."

You look around at the audience. The people Roza and Liliya saved, and the small shelter they helped build. Well, there's no real need for a shelter inside the Hyperion, but it's got to be far nicer than sitting in a cubicle farm doing nothing.

They did that while knowing nothing about what happened. Without knowing if their family, their friends, if anyone they knew at all had survived. In an alien world that, by Rozaliya's admission, hurts her just to interact with.

Veliona, apparently, stayed up late to comfort Bronya while she cried herself to sleep. You didn't think she had it in her, especially back then, but you know exactly what she must have been feeling. You did the exact same thing for Rozaliya and Liliya, just a little later.

You walk over to them.

"What are you doing?" asks Liliya.

You grab them both by the hand, and turn to face the door.

"I want you to know," Veliona says. "This is a really bad idea."

"Vel," you say. "Be quiet for a second."

You hold their hands, and take a deep breath.

"I love you both," you say. "If something goes wrong... I don't care what happens to me, but I want you two to stay alive. No matter what, stay alive. Don't worry about me. Like I said, I'm hard to kill."

You look into their eyes. Your eyes are a little clouded with tears.

"Is that a confession?" Rozaliya asks. "Because I think that's a confession."

You shake your head, happy to see her smirk again. Veliona laughs.

"I think that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard," she says. "But Rozaliya, don't get the wrong impression. Seele is taken."

"By who?" you ask, your smile fading a little.

"Bronya, of course." Veliona cocks her head to one side. "Right? Seele, I think you've forgotten something. She's dead, yes, but..."

But what?

Veliona's smile fades. She frowns, and drags the three of you out of the room. You stumble along, curious what she's trying to say -- curious, and a little hopeful. Bronya is dead... right?

It's a changing room that all four of you end up continuing the conversation in. An incongruous location, but what Vel says next makes all such thoughts fly out of your head.

"But you're holding on to the Core of Reason. Even when the sea started tearing you apart, you refused to let it go. That's why you nearly died, and... Seele, there's a reason you wouldn't let it go. Since Welt could use it to resurrect himself, then maybe so can Bronya. If she can't, then maybe we can help her. She's dead, but... she might not stay that way."

Veliona pulls you into a hug. Her body is warm against yours. Her hair is soft against your cheek.

"We'll definitely get her back," she whispers in your ear. "We have to."

Then she steps away. You blush fiercely. Still... still Vel, but you're glad to have her back.

Rozaliya and Liliya take a little while to recover from the shock, and Roza bursts into tears again. Happy tears, this time. You take a little while to calm her down, inasmuch as 'calm' is a state she's able to achieve -- it's not, in fact -- so when you finally set out, it's by the side of an entirely more exuberant pair of twins. That's how the world should be, and you're happy to see it.

You just wish... you just hope things will stay that way.

ooOOoo

"So how does this work, exactly?" Roza says, walking next to you with her hands behind her neck. "Flattening rifts, or whatever you're doing."

You're headed towards engineering, which means there's a few hundred meters of corridor. Not all in a straight line, of course, and most of it unpassable, but that still leaves a bit of a walk before you can start. You wish it was more interesting than plain metal corridors. Then again, after what you've seen of the Deep, maybe you shouldn't.

Also. Murgle.

"Do you know basic honkai theory?" you ask, in lieu of answering.

"I got a perfect score," Liliya says. "Rozaliya barely passed, because she's a Roza. There. I didn't call you an idiot, see?"

"Yeah, yeah," Roza says. "I wasn't concentrating."

"You never do."

"Honkai energy," you say, smiling slightly. "It's a misnomer. Not energy, and it doesn't really try to ruin anything, but it's alive almost. What it does is eat the reality of the stuff it interacts with, which you can use to make power -- when electrons and protons suddenly disappear, that's exploitable. It's also really dangerous. Thing is..." You take a deep breath.

"That's different from what we learned in class," Liliya says, looking at you.

"I don't know the right words," you say softly. "But I've seen it from the other side. There's the real world, which is, well, real. And then there are bubble universes, like this one, which don't follow proper laws of physics. They're controlled by what happens in the real world, and it's just Tesla's invention that's keeping that from happening to you. And then there's the stuff that's... in between. That's the sea of quanta."

"Wow," Vel says. "That's... actually really interesting. Not what I expected from you."

"What were you expecting?"

She smiles. "Dunno."

You shake your head. "Anyway, the sea of quanta isn't made up of anything in particular. Bubble universes tend to have time loops, or they slowly fall apart, or bad things happen for no obvious reason, but they at least have a form of causality. The sea of quanta is just... noise. If you end up inside it, and you can think, then it'll probably reflect your thoughts back at you -- but that's because thoughts have correlations back to the real world, or at least that's what Tesla said. Or it's just reflecting thoughts, and you can't tell the difference. Or it's tearing you apart, and you can't tell. It's... scary."

Liliya shivers. "I'm glad you got out of there."

"So'm I," you say. You look down. "I had Vel to help, though. Um, but between the real world, and the bubbles, and the sea itself, there's a gradient of sorts. There's a shore, where the sea washes up against reality, and there's... well, there's not life, exactly, but there's stuff that just happens to randomly find patterns where it can make itself more real."

You look at Rozaliya. Surprisingly, she's paying attention.

"And because it does," you say. "And because of something about quantum mechanics that gives it lots of chances, that happens all the time. That stuff is the only part of the sea that ever gets real enough to interact with the real world, or with bubbles, so of course it's aggressive. That's what we call honkai energy."

"So there's... wait." Liliya frowns. "So honkai beasts are... are they aggressive because of what they're made of?"

"I dunno," you say.

The thing is... the thing is, you're made up entirely of the stuff of the quantum sea yourself. What reality you had, when you were thrown headfirst into it, was lost years ago. You didn't drag yourself out of it yourself, though -- you were pulled, by Bronya. Maybe that's what made the difference, or maybe you're just making stuff up.

You don't know.

Honkai radiation doesn't burn you, it just feels... overeager? Exuberant? A bit like Rozaliya. It's hard to define, and you're still a lot more real than the Hyperion, anyway.

You can't answer the question. You're not quite real enough for that.

"I... I think," you say slowly. You're guessing, but, "I think it's both. Honkai beasts really are alive, but the stuff they're made of wants to be real. A beast that didn't try, wouldn't... wouldn't be cooperating. It might notice that, somehow."

Like with Mei, or Kiana. Or Bronya. Although...

Something nags at you, a slightly sour note in that theory, but you can't put your finger on it.

"Anyway," you say. "Tesla built a few... I guess let's call them shelters. There's one surrounding all of engineering, and one on the bridge, and inside them physics works just like normal. There wasn't one where we found you, though. You were just lucky, and I guess proximity to a shelter also helps. Everywhere else is being..." You close your eyes, then open them. "Eroded. But that's like taking a picture, and scribbling on it with crayon. Even if you can't see what used to be there, you can still guess. You can maybe even erase the crayon."

You nod, and stare into the ceiling.

"Yeah. I guess that's it."

There's silence, for a while, before Rozaliya explodes.

"That didn't explain what you're doing at all!"

"I'm sorry, Roza," you say. "I really am. But I think... I think I'll be able to figure it out when I'm trying. That's why I didn't want you here, though."

There's a pause. Rozaliya looks, grimly, to her left, and Veliona shifts uncomfortably.

"And her?" she asks. "No, don't tell me. It's beyond obvious, I was just confused by the lack of darkness and tentacles and stuff. I've even seen her sneak out for snacks in the middle of the night. The reason she's in a body of her own now... that's because of the situation, right?"

You nod slowly, watching Rozaliya's smirk return.

"You understand now, right?" you say. "I'm going to start working soon. When I do, I want the two of you to stay back."

"Nope," Rozaliya says. She glances at her sister.

"Nuh-uh," Liliya confirms.

You sigh.

= = =

I'm sure it's fine.

[ ] Let them stay.
[ ] Convince them to stay back, at least a little bit.
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

"Seele," Rozaliya says. She steps in front of you, and puts her hands on your shoulders. Her eyes are incredibly serious. "You're the last one. Out of everyone from the orphanage, we're the only three left. If we're going to die, we're going to die together. We're not going to get in your way, but you're not getting rid of us. You hear me?"

Liliya nods.

"Yeah," she says. "We're not letting go that easy."

You stare into their eyes, then nod. In truth, there's a lot you could say to try to convince them. You could guilt-trip them, explain how horrible you'll feel if they get hurt, but that... that would be far too unfair. They feel the same way, and...

It's comforting. Having them here.

"Alright," you say. "I guess I don't get a choice."

Rozaliya, serious expression breaking, gives you a hug. Liliya follows, and you smile as warmth fills your chest. They're trying to make up for lost time. It's nice.

ooOOoo

Your parents died during the second Honkai eruption.

You don't remember them, of course. You were a baby at the time, and your first clear memory is of your Matushka, in the orphanage, telling you off for making the twins cry. Even today, you remember how unfair that felt; how unfair it was that Roza and Liliya were so much better actors than you, despite being smaller. You were probably five years old at the time.

You don't recall who actually stole the cookies, but you bet it was Roza.

It's always a safe bet to blame Roza.

Your next clear memory, however, is of sharing cookies with the twins after they found you hiding in your toy chest, and that's one of your fondest memories. Not because it's the happiest, or the funniest, or for any truly worthwhile reason. Just because it's the first you have of the twins, your sisters and best friends for most of your life, and it was so very--

So completely--

So utterly *Roza*.

Even back then, Liliya was always the quiet one. She's Rozaliya's little sister, but that's not why she's a centimeter shorter and always tired. They're the same age, after all.

--

No, it's because of the lack of good cookies.

You were an orphan, after all. The cookies were probably stale.

Stale enough to stunt Liliya's growth, at least according to your Matushka. And she would know.

Lucky for you, you're a good thief and you learned from the best. To this day, nobody can beat your record at the Orphanage of Scared Children. You ate well, so now you've grown tall.

ooOOoo

"Roza, what are you *saying!*" you demand, staring at her in disbelief. "Don't teach Veliona nonsense!"

"It's not nonsense." She pouts. "Liliya never got enough cookies."

"That... is because Roza-idiotka ate them all," Liliya says.

You feel the warmth settle into your heart. God, you love these two.

"Eh. So, it's a little late, but welcome to the family," Rozaliya tells Veliona. "Your first task is to steal some cookies, or other baked goods. Your second task is to bring them to me."

"Baked goods?" Veliona asks, raising an eyebrow. Oh, she's having fun. "What kind?"

"Doesn't matter, just some for me to sample. I may be a little addicted to cookies. I'm a growing girl with a fast metabolism."

Certainly two of these things is true. You smile, but it quickly fades. The thing is-- and you didn't want to stress this-- that Liliya isn't exactly healthy, and your youngest sister has been sick, on and off, ever since you first saw her with the augmentations. More 'on' than 'off' over the last year. She seems fine right now, but...

No. You don't want to think about this. Sure, she's a bit sickly, but it's not going to matter. It rarely extends beyond falling asleep early in the evening.

You'll find some cookies later; there's bound to be some on the ship. For now--

"I'll do my best to take care of them," Vel says, sensing your mood. Her own smile fades a little, but just a little. "Them, and you."

"Vel, you don't need to--"

"I'll do my best to take care of them," she says again, more forcefully than before. You're not sure what to make of it.

"Okay." You nod.

Vel looks around at your friends, smiling a little. "We'll take care of them," she repeats one last time, before turning on her heel and looking at the rifts. You watch her, sensing her mood. She feels... Determined. Maybe a little dark, even. Nothing new about that, only, it feels different than usual.

Warmer.

She's changing. That's got to be a good thing, right?

"We'd better get started," you say. "Stay back a little, okay?"

Liliya nods. Good, at least you won't have to worry about the twins, like, accidentally falling in. You're worried enough already, and though Veliona doesn't show it, you think so is she. This isn't going to kill you. It's still... scary. You've never done anything like it before.

"We'll be fine," Vel says. "Don't worry so much."

Don't worry, she says. Like that's going to happen. Vel looks away, focusing on the rifts. The air around them shimmers and vibrates, threatening to tear your eyes apart.

You should probably start working too.

"I'll see you in a bit," you say, and step inside her.

It's like being hugged. That's the main impression you have, whenever you're one person and Vel is taking the lead. She isn't always *nice*, but it's impossible to mistake her for someone who doesn't care. It's comfortable.

You can sense the rifts now. They're not alive, exactly--they're just part of the ship, but they're broken. Each rift is a place where another reality tried to overwrite yours, and was only partially rejected. It happens more in the air, you think, because air is just air regardless of world.

Vel walks up to the closest rift.

It's a flaw. A place, seen from here, where the concept of 'place' grows vague. Vel and you have a rapid, mental discussion, and you settle on trying to smooth it out by overwriting it with the concept of 'place' from a random segment of air right above you. You can do that, you think, because you're a lot more real than both the Hyperion, and the bubble universe it's collided with here. If a bubble is what it is. You're not sure.

Kiana just has to point at it and will it, but she's cheating. The Core of Void does all the work. Not that you'd want to borrow that cheat code, necessarily...

You're about to touch it, when it changes. It shimmers, the colors moving and reorganizing themselves eagerly. It's not just a rip in reality, now--it's a painting. An winter paradise in the countryside, with sunbeams shining through trees from above.

You draw back, alarmed. Vel does, you mean. A trap? No, that makes no sense. Could it be...

You're about to investigate further, when suddenly, it changes again. This time, it's not a change in the rift, but rather the world inside it that's changed.

The gentle sunlight has turned red, and a horrible, burning acid falls from above. The... painting changes rapidly, monsters -- honkai beasts -- materializing from nothing.

It seems like...

It can't be a memory.

= = =

As usual, the answer is obvious once you see it.
[ ] Destroy it.
[ ] Keep watching.
[ ] Write-in?

 

[Baughn]

Probably content warning: Violence. Because ow.

= = =

You keep watching. This scene... you think you've heard it described, once. It's a Honkai eruption, like the one your parents died in. This might be the day they died.

The snow-filled winter paradise shimmers and falls away, to be replaced by a horrid, burning scene. The sky is red, and falling from it are not snowflakes but drops of liquid that look like molten copper.

They hiss when they hit the snow. There's no heat here, but you know just by looking that they'd burn if you touched them. Not you, necessarily. Reality.

They're not falling from the sky, exactly... They're coming from somewhere beyond your vision. You look closer, and you see it.

A tear in reality. A hole leading into the void.

You watch in horror as the snow around it begins to... Rot? Is that the word? Can snow rot? This snow is rotting. You look back, just for a second, meaning to ask Rozaliya to step further back; and you feel a jolt, as if the world is tilting. You feel dizzy, but only for a second. Then the scene changes entirely.

ooOOoo

You're standing in the snow, holding an enormous sword with a dangerous-looking, black and red blade. It's cold here, so cold it hurts, but it's not real. It's less real than even the depths of the Quantum Sea. It's like the reality meant for a single piece of corridor has been stretched across a continent.

That isn't the only thing that's wrong. The world is different, now. Darker. There's a red sun in the sky, barely distinguishable from the blackness of space; it doesn't light anything up, but you can see around you regardless. The snow looks as pure white as usual.

Coppery drops of pure ruin keep falling around you. A monster howls from beyond your vision.

You look down at yourself, and realize that you're not a teenage girl anymore. You've been transformed into someone else entirely, a woman with long red hair and... And advanced, red and black battle armor.

It's not something you have much experience with, but this looks like a battlesuit. You twist, looking behind you, and find four metallic wings. They're folded at your back, but you expect they'd be able to bear your weight. You don't know how to move them, so you don't.

Your own, you find, still work perfectly fine. You spread them, or Veliona spreads them, and a shimmering blue light shines down on the snow.

You could easily tear this world apart. You're half minded to do so, to get back to the twins before they get too worried, but you're also curious. Curious, and a little horrified. You've seen a lot of bubble universes in the past, but this has to be one of the most disturbing.

And you've seen more horror than you'd like to think about.

Soon you find yourself hovering over an endless frozen world, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The rain of ruin is still falling, but here, on the inside, there's no obvious source. Just a general direction, a place where the rain is denser than elsewhere.

Thataways...

You fly towards it, feeling a pit growing in your stomach. It's not like you don't understand what's going on, exactly. Every other time, when you were trapped in a bubble universe, it was a reflection of someone's mind. Someone who'd fallen into the Sea, or just been reflected by the Sea, or...

They were all someone's regular reality. Tragic, usually, but not like this.

This... This feels similar, but different.

A lot different.

Whatever this place was made from, it's turned into a nightmare. Everything is twisted, dark, and disturbing. You hope it's something from outside the ship, because if it isn't..

You'll take one step at a time. First, you have to--

Suddenly, you find yourself immersed in darkness. You try to move your arm, but it's not there. You try to look around, but you can't see anything.

You start to panic, which makes things worse. You can barely think over the racing of your heart.

You're about to try forcing your way out, when it dissipates. A second later you're back in 'reality', this time hovering over an endless sheet of ice. The sky is perfectly clear, the ice is... Ice and snow, just like you'd expect. Nothing in particular stands out about it. You can barely see the ground, but you're pretty sure there's mountains in the distance. Maybe trees. The rain of ruin has stopped, but the sun is even darker.

You hear a crackling sound, and look down. Directly below you, there's...

It makes you sick to the stomach.

A girl. A child, or maybe a young teenager. She's either dead or unconscious, but either way she's been hammered, hacked and cut up beyond belief. You can only see her from the waist up, but that's enough. One arm is hanging from a strip of flesh, and has been vertically chopped straight through. She's covered in blood, and her clothes are tattered rags. Her hair is a pretty purple colour, but it's matted with blood.

There's another crackling sound, and you look back out at the scenery. There's a large... Thing hanging in the sky. You can't tell if it's a craft of some kind, or what.

Whatever it is, it's landing. You can see a large number of people emerging from it, armoured figures wearing helmets that cover their faces. It looks like... it might be a Shicksal aerial transport, if aircraft could have cancer.

There's a sound in the distance. It takes you a moment to place the high pitched whine, but you realize what it is fairly quickly.

Somewhere, a child is screaming.

You look around for the source, and spot another girl on the ground, not too far from where you're floating. She looks like she's Kiana, if Kiana had purple hair and was a few years younger. She's kneeling on the ground, her hands spasmodically clutching a dagger that's pushed into the chest of a young, white-haired woman. The woman's eyes are dull and empty, and her face is twisted into a grimace of pain. You can see it all in impossible detail, even from this distance.

The girl screams again, pulling the dagger out and hacking through the air with it as she looks around desperately. Her hair's a mess, her eyes are red from crying and her face is twisted with grief and terror.

You can't... You can't just watch this happen. Who knows if she's from your world or not, but anyone can see she's suffering.

= = =

AI Dungeon is good at nightmares. Maybe a little too good.
I wish you luck with this; it might be both easier and harder than expected.

[ ] Leave
Seele would murder me.
[ ] Try to comfort her
[ ] Tear this nightmarish world apart
[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

You could leave, doing nothing. It would be easy, you wouldn't hurt anyone, and had this been two years ago then you think it's what you would have done. If this had been two years ago, then it's what Veliona would have suggested, and you would have gone along. If it had been two years ago, then your lack of confidence in yourself might have forced you to run, too scared to help the girl below.

But that was two years ago, and today you're too horrified by what you're seeing to even think of running away.

The girl—Kiana, you presume—throws her dagger down next to the woman's body, looking at it with tears streaming down her face. She collapses forward, letting out a soul-rending scream of anguish that nearly breaks your heart. You can't stand by and watch this. Despite your fear, despite the danger, despite everything...

"Seele, wait," Veliona says. "Think about this for a moment."

"I have thought about this, Vel," you say, your voice breaking. "I can't just watch this."

You pick up speed, barreling down towards Kiana. You're not sure it's really her, but who else can it be? Really? You hope it's her. You'll have at least some idea of what to do, if it's her.

"I said stop," Veliona snaps. "Think!"

You shudder to a halt in mid-air, and not by your own choice. Veliona just seized control of your body, locking you out as she watches the girl below you.

"Vel," you whimper. "Let me go. Please, Vel, let me go save her."

"I'm sorry, Seele," she says softly. "I just don't want you to get hurt. Or to hurt Kiana, actually. You can tell, can't you? That this is a nightmare."

"Yes," you say. "Of course I can."

"In that case, who are we?"

Vel holds up a red-and-black armor-clad arm for your inspection. It's not yours. It obviously isn't yours. It's far too muscled for a girl as scrawny as you are, and there are lines on it that, now that you're looking at them, match the symptoms of fatal Honkai poisoning. You stare at it in confusion. The dream is casting you as someone else entirely, but that's normal for dreams. Normal enough at least, for dreams that aren't your own.

"I don't know who this is," Vel says. "It's just, this is a nightmare. What's the chance we're someone that girl will enjoy seeing? What's the chance talking to her will just make everything worse? If we're going down there, let's at least use our own appearance."

She releases you, and you take control of your body once more.

You don't continue descending, instead hovering uncertainly. Vel is right, at least in that you ought to think this through. This is a nightmare, and… in that case…

"This is a nightmare," you say, stating the obvious. "It's not real."

"Well, what do you think?" Vel asks.

You shake your head. "Then, why don't we just wake her?"

Chances are, Kiana's trapped in some way. Maybe she's 'just' having a nightmare, but if that's true then it's the worst nightmare you've ever seen. You'll probably have nightmares about it later, and you still have to fight to stop yourself from flying down and tackle-hugging her.

Maybe it's not just a nightmare. Kiana's the Herrscher of Void, but she's had nightmares before. They've never turned into bubble universes; you think you'd have heard. Kiana's been having nightmares pretty frequently since you met her. This is probably happening because of the situation, but can you take the risk?

Vel remains silent a moment longer.

"We could," she says. "Tearing the bubble apart would do it. It'd be a shock, but this isn't her mind we're in. It's a reflection of her mind. Destroying it is less likely to harm her than changing it would."

You don't like that wording.

"But do you think that's what we should do?" you ask.

"No, it isn't," Vel says. "Look, I'm no more an expert in this than you are. What I think we should do is pack up and leave. If you insist on helping, then I'm out of ideas. Look at her, is that even Kiana?"

She looks downwards, focusing your eyes on the girl below you. She definitely looks like Kiana, purplish-violet hair aside, but...

Your thoughts derail, as the soldiers reach Kiana and surround her. They're yelling, and the ones with guns quickly open fire. She doesn't seem to notice.

You watch as she's shot in the head. Her head snaps to the side from the sheer force of it, fragments of bone and gore flying through the air, but that's all that happens. She doesn't react at all.

Her eyes flare golden. Reality wavers around you, the previously placid fabric of the dream-bubble—regardless of content—suddenly taking on a much more... biological feel. It crawls chaotically, shivers flying up your spine as it almost licks you, curiously trying to determine what you are. It doesn't attack. At least it doesn't attack.

Instead, it almost purrs in satisfaction.

The soldiers react with terror, and the ones who don't immediately die are driven to their knees by abject fear. You watch as Kiana gracefully stands up, untouched by the bullets that should have ruined her body. There's a look of arrogance on her face.

"See?" Vel whispers softly into your mind. "Told you. That's the Herrscher of Void."

You can't stay.

None of this feels right, but you can't stay. You have to get out of here.

You 'push' outwards, drifting through the borders of a bubble universe that has, abruptly, gone sticky. Had Kiana realized you were there, then you don't think you could have. Not, at least, without a risk of hurting her... or the twins, who should still be nearby in the real world.

Your skin tingles as your body dissolves, leaving only the tangle of interlinked concepts that's… you. You're floating over a sea of dreams. You're in a place between dreams and reality, temporarily joined to each other by Kiana's bubble universe. It's dark; there's barely anyone here. Thirty, forty people at most. All you have to do is keep moving 'upwards', and you'll be right back where you left.

Or, you could...

You turn the thought around in your head for a good minute.

Most of you is stuck outside the Hyperion. Kiana could have annihilated your avatar in the Hyperion, body and soul, and it'd barely affect the real you. That's the largest link, and it's only failing to block out your vision because it's inside you, but from here you can reach a few other 'places'. Configurations. There's Kiana's dream, and those of a few dozen other people, though all the others would be dead ends. There's that piece of corridor you came from, linked to the nightmare world by the rift you were trying to close. And there's Kiana herself...

Could you return to reality in Kiana's bedroom, instead of where you came from?

From the corridor it'd take you at least an hour to get to Kiana, and that's assuming you don't get lost. Too long to stop a nightmare. Far too long for one like this. You bet she's back at the bridge, bunking with Theresa or her father, but you might even be wrong about that.

From in here… the connection is thin, barely there, and it's doing something subtle you aren't sure of, but it's still a connection. You should be able to chase it back.

"Vel, I'm going to do something stupid," you say, and explain your idea. She's silent for a few minutes as you drift through the void. You feel her emotions change several times.

Not exactly.

You feel the expressions she's trying to make, even if you don't strictly speaking have a face at the moment.

When did life get so strange?

You know the answer, of course; it just isn't one you care to remember. It brought you Veliona, yes. Taught you to work together. But if you'd been given the choice, between three years with Bronya and…

Between Bronya and your other half…

You go still, silently floating in the space between concepts. A butterfly with unflapping wings.

Between her and… it wasn't meant to be this way, but Veliona's really changed, and… and Rozaliya already…

If you don't want to risk something precious, then you should stop lying to yourself. Rozaliya's right.

"The last time you did something this foolish, you turned a fire extinguisher into a cognitive hazard," your sister says in her usual way, ignorant of your internal turmoil. "Are you sure about this?"

"It put out the fire, didn't it?" you reply, smiling widely.

There's another pause. Your thoughts hitch. You try to put it out of your mind, to focus on saving Kiana. Who's maybe got someone like Vel locked up inside her, unable to talk. For a while, you actually thought of her as a demon. It's hard not to have your thoughts dragged back to your sister.

What's Veliona thinking, you wonder? She's studying you.

You think you know how Liliya feels now. All you want to do is to hold her, and not let go.

"I'm almost sure I'm supposed to talk you out of this," she says. "I just find I don't want to. You'll be careful, right?"

"I'll be fine," you say.

"No, I mean with Kiana. I'm sure you'll be fine, but she's fragile right now."

You nod, distractedly, and hug Veliona inside your head. You can feel her confusion about what you're doing. It is, admittedly, easier when you're in separate bodies. Or when you have any sort of body whatsoever. You laugh to yourself about that.

"I have one more request," you say, voice wavering only slightly. "Can you go back to the twins and let them know what I'm doing? I don't want to just up and disappear on them. Rozaliya would go spare."

You hope that's something she can do, because saying the twins would be unimpressed is an understatement. They might actually do something that could hurt them. If Veliona says no, then—as much as you hate the idea—you'll have to leave Kiana to her own devices. The risk of losing your two younger sisters, of losing what little is left of your family, is just too high. Any risk at all would be too high.

Vel is quiet for a moment.

"If this goes south, and I'm not there," she says.

You nod. "I'll get out. I won't hesitate even a second."

She nods, before you feel her split off.

"The twins do seem like fun. They remind me of someone," she says, smiling wanly. "I'm not sure who. Okay. I'll head out first, just in case this goes wrong."

You nod. "See you soon, big sis."

Vel hesitates a final, shocked moment, then turns around, giving you a final wave before disappearing. You make your own preparations.

It's... wrong, you think, to say your wings look like those of a butterfly. For one, they're far too large; they don't look like wings, they look like an ocean. Their tracery of azure lines rises up around you, fully unfolding, a line-drawing of something that might be butterfly wings and might be a continent.

For another, it's not that you're a teenage girl with wings. That tracery, untangled, is you; the girl, a superfluous appendage. Spread out in three-dimensional reality, the wings only look like wings because of someone's sense of aesthetics. You love butterflies, so maybe it's yours?

In conceptual space, you only look like a butterfly because Bronya keeps saying you do. Most of the time you're folded up inside your stigma, but your physical, pretend-biological body has gotten less and less important. You use it for—eating cake, and hugging people—both crucial activities, yet neither is something you want to do right now.

It's a butterfly made of light, therefore, which skims around Kiana's dream, seeking a return to reality—but not the obvious, simple path. It's a strain, one that grows the further you get from Veliona, and you feel lonely in a way you haven't been since you were twelve. Still, you have to try. You can't leave Kiana alone, not like this. At least, you... you assume it's Kiana.

ooOOoo

It's Kiana.

You wing your way back into reality, manifesting with a convulsive effort that leaves you dizzy and stumbling, and it's all you can do not to fall over. When you straighten up, the first thing you see is Kiana, curled up in her bed and crying. She's definitely asleep, but the tears streaming down her face are very real.

She's recreated the St. Freya dorms, with enough beds for six people, but there's only her and Theresa in the room. That fact barely registers, in the face of her pain.

"Kiana?" you whisper, touching her shoulder gently, only to have to catch yourself when she flinches away with a whimper. The walls around you pulse three words, a desperate prayer in a voice full of terror.

"Ich liebe dich."
"Ich liebe dich."
"Ich liebe dich."

"Kiana!"

You don't exactly shout, something tells you that would be bad. But you speak loudly, reaching out with both hands this time, pulling the older girl close. The whispers stutter, for a moment accelerating into a wordless scream. But you don't flinch. And then her arms are grasping you tight, pulling you close, clinging in desperation in a way that you'd never imagined Kiana would ever do.

Is it Kiana? You try to answer that as the hold loosens swiftly, a sniffle drawing attention to the sudden wetness at your breast. It's hard to imagine, and-

"Seele?" She asks, the confusion clear. "I thought you went to search for survivors. What are you doing here? "

In for a penny, as that odd saying went. You take a breath, and sit up.

"I came to find you, Kiana," you confess.

"You did?" she asks, her voice childishly hopeful, and you nod.

"I found somewhere while we were searching," you say, trying to be gentle. "I think I found another survivor. But I can't save her."

"Why not?"

"She's…" How did you explain this? "She's stuck somewhere, somewhere horrible. I can feel her, she's scared and confused and hurt. But I can't save her. I came to get you to help me."

"Of course," Kiana nods. "Where is she?"

"Please," you say, pulling tight as Kiana tries to rise. "Just...tell me you'll listen first."

She looks confused, but nods. "Alright."

You reach up with one hand, and tap your friend gently on her forehead. "She's in here, Kiana," you explain, tapping your own head. "Like Vel used to be with me, only I don't think you can hear her."

You wait patiently, and Kiana is quiet for a moment.

"Seele," she says carefully. "What are you talking about?"

"I…" You stumble a little. It's hard to explain this when you're still feeling so alone. Vel will be back soon, you tell yourself. "When we went looking, we found a bubble universe, one not like any I'd ever seen. All the others I've been in, they're like echoes, maybe dreams. But this was a nightmare. And I think it was–" You swallow hard. "I think it was your nightmare, Kiana."

She stares at you, uncomprehending, and you find the words coming out in a rush. How you'd appeared in that awful world of ice and ash, finding two violet-haired girls. One torn apart, the other holding a knife. The terror, the pain in her voice. Everything else.

"I think," you say quietly. "When you were little, something happened to you. Something awful." You reach out to touch her shoulder, but she pulls away. "Kiana, I'm sorry. You don't deserve this. No one deserves this."

"What did you do?" Kiana asks. Her voice is shrill. Fearful? Angry? It's not that you don't understand, but–

"Nothing," you say. "You know you weren't the first Herrscher of the Void, Kiana." She didn't recognise the place you'd described, yet her face had turned pale as a ghost when you'd described the girl and the woman so similar to her. "I think that when you were young, when Otto did what he did, it wasn't just the previous Herrscher that found a home in your mind." You close your eyes. "I think someone else did too, and I've found her. She's been alone all her life, and she's in agony."

"Her?"

"That girl. The girl who became the first Herrscher of the Void."

You hear Kiana gasp as she puts the pieces together. Then...

"No." She shakes her head. "That can't be. She's my nightmare. She's... she's not a person. She's a monster!" Desperation makes the words louder, fuelled by rejection and fear.

"The Herrscher of Void?" You shake your head. "A monster, yes, but everything we know says that wasn't by choice. The girl who was forced to become her?" You harden your words, despite everything it costs you. "Do you think she had any more freedom in that than you did?"

You're angry; you want Kiana to understand. The girl you found was a scared child, clearly in agony.

"What do you think can go wrong, if you just try to talk to her?" you ask. "Not the Herrscher, but this girl. The one I saw in your nightmare."

Kiana's eyes dart around, wild with terror, then fall on you. She breathes deeply, as if trying to control herself. Takes another breath. Then, she nods.

"I'll try." She closes her eyes, and leans back onto the bed. You stay sitting.

You wait.

Vel is back with you by the time Kiana opens her eyes again, her presence a much-needed balm to your anxiety. Kiana's face is a mask of horror, and her blue eyes swim with tears.

"You're right," she says. "I can… I can feel her. She's so scared."

"Kiana–"

"But I need to understand. She's too scared, too hurt, so much that I can barely reach her and I don't even know her name." She pushes herself up, ignoring how one hand punches straight through the sheets and bed below it. "I need to know her name!"

There's a terrible will in those words, enough to make you shiver and for Vel to draw suddenly close, red light glinting where only you can see it. Kiana doesn't notice, but her eyes are still blue. That's something. She's out of the bed before you can move, crosses the dorm room with a handful of swift steps, and there she does something you'd never have dared. She places one hand on each of Theresa's shoulders and shakes. Hard.

"Wake up, Theresa. I need you to wake up right now, there's someone I need to ask you about."

"Wha-?" The girl groans, rolling over and opening her eyes. When they land on Kiana, she jolts upright in bed. "Kiana? What are you doing?"

"The girl who became the first Herrscher of the Void," Kiana demands, ignoring the question. "What was her name, Theresa?"

"W-what?"

"Her name. What was her fucking name!"

"I...I don't understand. Kiana, what's wrong?"

Vel's hands clench into fists as you feel the world around you shudder, and Kiana reels back with a cry of pain.

"Her name, Theresa!" She cries. "I can't explain why. Please, just tell me!"

"Sirin," the diminutive headmistress replies. "Her name was Sirin."

Kiana slumps, sagging back against you as if all strength has left her body. You gasp for breath, vision darkening as you find yourself staring into Kiana's exhausted eyes. She's doing something, something that's making the space around her harden, and that, combined with exhaustion from being separated from your sister, is making it almost impossible to keep standing.

"Sirin?"

"That," Kiana whispers, "That's her name. I can feel it."

Her head turns, gaze finding yours across the room. "Thank you," she breathes, and all your reservations about her, about this situation, seem to disintegrate in that one moment. This is your Kiana, the real one.

You've never been so happy to see her in your life.

The moment is sullied somewhat by the sudden flash of movement behind Kiana. Golden chains whirl in around Theresa, ripping through the bed as a large cross crashes down through it. It splits along an invisible seam, flaring with power as spears of golden light glint in anticipation. The look on the headmistress's face is hard, fury and fear carving it from granite in a way no child's should.

Vel moves faster than you could hope to match, her red-and-black clothed form darting forward in a blur. You leap forward to catch her, and succeed only in running into her back as she comes to a stop with her right hand fastened about Theresa's wrist.

"This isn't what you think." There's no room for argument in her voice, but Theresa finds a space anyway.

"Don't you know who that is?" She snaps, her voice icy. "Don't you know–"

"It's not the Herrscher." You surprise yourself with your own fierceness, slipping past Vel and placing yourself between Theresa and Kiana. "Please, Theresa. It's really not."

"Then who is she?"

"The girl who remembers you trying to be kind," Kiana says from behind you both, yet there's something different to her voice. A ragged softness, in utter opposition to her usual boisterous nature. "And who remembers what the cross can do. Please, don't use it."

"Ki-Kiana?" Theresa never drops her stance, ready to release the Oath of Judah in an instant, but her voice tells another tale.

"Not," a small gasp of pain, "not just me anymore. But not Her, either. Someone new...and older than me." You turn to find her shaking her head, a rich violet shimmering across her normally pure white hair. "She...remembers you, I think. It's hard to tell, I can barely hear her. But she's here with me, Aunt Teri, and I know what She felt like. Sirin isn't Her."

"How can you be sure?" Theresa asks, her hands lowering ever so slightly. Behind her, the golden spears begin to retract back into the cross.

"Because I can feel her." Kiana's smile is almost heartbreaking. "All she wants is a friend."

ooOOoo

"So, um," you say.

It takes you all a while to calm down, and to be truthful, you want nothing more than to fade into the background. To be entirely honest, you'd like it even better if you could leave; go back to search and rescue duty. It'd be easy to justify. You left your younger siblings hanging, for one, and a lot of people with them.

There's just…

"Yes, Seele? What is it?" Theresa says. She at least is back to normal.

"I…" You hesitate. "I just, um… there's something I have to tell you," you say in a rush. She blinks blearily at you. She looks tired, but it's the middle of the night, you guess.

You weren't gone that many hours. That's something you prefer not to think about.

Before she can respond, you squeeze Vel's hand and rush on. She stiffens a little.

"I, um. I want to introduce you to my twin… older sister," you say. Your skin is prickling. "Theresa, this is Veliona… Vollerei? I thought I should let you… know that. And I want you to meet each other."

You make it a question, lean into Veliona's side and shrink a little. She gives you a strange look, but nods, relaxing against you in a way you aren't at all used to.

"Yeah," your sister says, smiling softly. "Yeah, I think I'd like that."

= = =

You shouldn't assume Seele's perspective is the correct one. She said the right things, not necessarily for the right reasons; there's no guarantee she will in the future. Although there's definitely a sense in which her and Veliona are identical twins, or even the same person, it bears stating that they were born fifty thousand years apart.

They're separate people, every bit as distinct from each other as Roza and Liliya. For a while they were stuck with just a single body, yes, but that's all it was.

Also, massive thanks to @Snowfire for helping me with the second half of this chapter.

On a meta note: While I enjoy high update rates as much as anyone, it just isn't possible to write a good update all in a single evening. That isn't a matter of time; I can't spot flaws without sleeping on it. So from now on, expect updates to take two days (when they don't intimately involve Kiana). It'll give me time to work on my other quest.

Votes will still be until consensus.

[ ] Stay with Kiana as moral support / help restoring the corridors
Plus: We'll be nearby if this goes south.
Minus: Nobody is doing any rescuing.

- [ ] Starting with engineering
Plus: This is mostly done.
Minus: It'll still take most of a day. Probably.

- [ ] Starting with a path to the twins
Plus: Rozaliya doesn't bonk you. Someone is doing some rescuing.
Minus: The bridge isn't connected to engineering yet.

[ ] Go back to S&R
- [ ] Starting with the twins
Plus/minus: Fairly obvious.
Meta: Faster updates… temporarily.

[ ] Write-in

 

[Baughn]

...this ... does not quite imply but does strongly suggest the existence of a red or orange-colored Zaychik twin, to contrast with Bronya's blue and white color schema, esp. as Herrscherin of Reason.

...

...

...we're going to end up stealing Fleurs du Mal Bronya from a bubble universe at some point aren't we.

Click to shrink...

It's several months later. You've revived Bronya, and she's taking occasional trips to other bubble universes while you and your siblings work on the Hyperion. She's just come back from such a trip, in fact. The idea, the whole point, is to find people who are willing to join you; almost anything else, you or Kiana can make.

But, uh...

"Bronya," Vel says carefully. "Who's this?"

You follow her gaze. There's a small figure standing next to your girlfriend, one with features far more similar to Bronya than you'd think anyone could have. In fact, it looks like she's brought back her own little sister, only you know perfectly well Bronya doesn't have one. The only difference is her hair is red, and she's smaller, otherwise they're identical. The apparition stares at you for a moment longer, before bursting into tears and flinging herself at you and Vel.

"Vel!" she cries. "Seele! Vel! You're alive! You're alive, you're alive, you survived, you're alive!"

Veliona stiffens and blinks in surprise, before awkwardly patting the girl on the back.

It's a second Bronya.

"Uh... yes. I'm alive."

You're almost certainly not the Seele and Vel she knows. This is awkward.

"Vel! Seele! It's me, it's me, it's really me!"

Vel looks at you and raises an eyebrow.

This is really awkward. You look at Bronya, willing her to explain.

"Give them some air," Bronya says, placing her hands on her mini-me's shoulders and leading her back to the couch. She plops down there, pulling the girl on top of her lap. "I'll explain everything."

Vel and you slowly sit down on the couch opposite them, feeling like you're in a surreal dream. The girl can't be more than ten, but she looks exactly like Bronya.

"Explain," Vel says.

"Right. So, Delta sent me a message–" She gives you a second to take that in. "–and it included coordinates to a world she'd recently raided, plus a request. She was almost begging for me to pick up this girl. Yes, she's me; she's from a world where Matushka rescued her much earlier. Later on, things..." She sighs. "They went wrong. I haven't gotten the full story, and I'm not sure I want to. She can stay, right?"

You nod your head repeatedly.

"Of course!"

Bronya looks at you, a small smile playing around her lips. "Oh, and I'm sorry for breaking the color scheme."

 

[Thelxiope]

...nobody who's familiar with my writing will be very surprised by this, but I do enjoy thinking up variations on the basic 'standard human layout', whether that's physical changes or mental ones.

Click to shrink...

Huh.

You know, this raises a lot of interesting things about the hypothetical Nobilis/Glitch game cast by this quest's information shadow, which I am going to spoiler on account of maybe not everyone wants to read me going off on a thousand-word rant about tabletops, again.

Spoiler: Thel Goes Off On A Thousand-Word Rant About Tabletops, Again

So my first thought is about Seele's eyes.

When I wrote up Seele's character sheet, earlier in the thread, I gave her Unblemished Guise - rather than the usual 'Rider's Eyes' that Excrucians normally have, night-dark and full of falling stars, Seele just has, you know, eyes. Blue ones.

At the time I thought this was because Seele is in a weird wibbly space re: whether or not she actually counts as an Excrucian; and she's never actually been at war with the world, and so seems much more likely to have, by some quirk of her wyrd, the ability to pass as a daughter of Creation to casual inspection.

But now I'm thinking that-

Wait I should explain the eye thing first

So Riders - Excrucians, those people of Ninuan beyond the world, before the world, who ride into Creation to make an ending of it (and specifically the ones who ride into Creation to end the world; Ninuanni beings who are not part of the war are not Riders and do not usually have the Rider's Eyes) - have star-filled glimpses of night instead of eyes. This is not because their eyes are magic or weird. It's a perception issue.

There's a hitch, in outward-looking, between a Rider and a person from Creation. They try to see the Excrucian's eyes, and miss.

If the primary sense being used to perceive an Excrucian is not sight - say, the observer is blind; or they've been in pitch blackness for a few hours and are adapting to sensing primarily through touch - then something else hitches. Usually touch, for humans, since hearing and taste/smell don't ... they aren't reciprocal, you know? You can't listen at someone else's ears. You can't sniff someone's nose. Or, well, not effectively.

So, to the sense of touch, if it is the primary sense being used to discern them, a Rider - their skin feels like a wall of crumbling snow, with a cold, windy, winter night on the other side. The wall doesn't accurately trace their shape - like, if one reaches out, and pokes at them, piecemeal, they're in the right position; but run one's hand along their arm and it will quickly stop making sense as the shape of an arm. One could push through the wall - this is ... rather forward, I imagine, but it's possible - and feel the night wind and the barren branches on the other side.

But what if the Rider is blind?

Well, the connection still can't form - there's no reciprocal outward-looking to miss - so blind Riders have visible eyes. To sighted observer, they may ... have a discordant presence, as if their location were hard to pin down even if they're clearly right there - or, maybe, it's just that they seem perfectly normal until one tries to shake their hand and feels the snow.

The key is that it's an effect that happens from both ends. The Rider, and the observer, attempt to sense at each other in the same way, and miss.

So obviously Seele's eyes look fine.

She doesn't really use them for anything.

I think ... I think Seele has Lore 5, not Lore 4. Thus, she can use miracles of Greater Vision for free, and can reflexively have Vision active at all times and without it counting as an action.

Um, in less jargon-y terms ... Seele can perceive things for what they are rather than for what they look like, at all times, as just another sense. She can intuit structure rather than seeing substance.

This is, um, how sensing of any kind works in Ninuan, which does not have the inherent properties of Creation that make objects perceptible - namely, that Creational things are more or less "shouting" their existence out into the world at all times, and thus, are easy to perceive.

(it's worth noting that in Nobilis, physics is mostly lies. Light and sight are tied together somehow in the mythic world, but I can basically guarantee that "light wave-particles" have pretty much nothing to do with the actual mechanism of action)

In Ninuan, where things are dreaming the long, slow dreams of their wyrd rather than shouting, sensing them involves a bit more effort.

So anyway, Seele can ... just, sort of tell what things are. It might be sightlike or hearinglike, but only because she's had experience seeing and hearing things.

But - she was lost, in Ninuan, for a long time. Probably much longer than three years, from her perspective. And, being only sort-of an Excrucian, I think she probably had to learn structure-sense the hard way - sensing outwards into a complete sensory void, no sight, no sound, no touch, no smells, no proprioception or spatial awareness; for hours or days or weeks or years until she learned the trick of seeing what things are instead of seeing what they look like.

And, so - I think she sort of forgot how sight works.

I think that, because she had to fight and claw and scramble every inch of the way up to Lore 5

Because Ninaun is hostile to her, because it's never familiar or safe

Because it was hard for her to make her way back into the world, which it generally is not - there are seven easy ways across the Weirding Wall (eight, if you count the hole at the top, but that's defended by Heaven) and lots of smaller, side passages through it ... but Seele's wyrd is of being lost and confused, and it took her years and years to find them

... I think she sort of ... like, stopped seeing things conventionally.

She. um. She forgot how to see. Or to hear, or to touch, or to taste.

Her primary sensory modality is just ... intuiting what things are, directly, in her vicinity. It's the Ninuanni void-sense, which is in many ways easier to Seele than to most Strategists, because of circumstances

...So to bring this back around to her eyes ...

I don't think she actually has Unblemished Guise. I just think that -

Because Seele does not use her eyes to see, or her ears to hear, or her skin to touch -

Becuase she instead understands that things around her are visible, or or loud, or are soft or warm or cold or Bronya or whatever, directly, without an intermediate step -

I think Seele reads perfectly normal to all senses other than a miraculous power that can directly parse what things are, to which Seele feels weird - washed out, incomplete, and like she's occupying a bunch of possible positions rather than any specific location.

Meaning that she probably feels weirder to other Strategists than she does to anyone Creational, actually.

---

It's... wrong, you think, to say your wings look like those of a butterfly. For one, they're far too large; they don't look like wings, they look like an ocean. Their tracery of azure lines rises up around you, fully unfolding, a line-drawing of something that might be butterfly wings and might be a continent.

For another, it's not that you're a teenage girl with wings. That tracery, untangled, is you; the girl, a superfluous appendage. Spread out in three-dimensional reality, the wings only look like wings because of someone's sense of aesthetics. You love butterflies, so maybe it's yours?

In conceptual space, you only look like a butterfly because Bronya keeps saying you do. Most of the time you're folded up inside your stigma, but your physical, pretend-biological body has gotten less and less important. You use it for—eating cake, and hugging people—both crucial activities, yet neither is something you want to do right now.

It's a butterfly made of light, therefore, which skims around Kiana's dream, seeking a return to reality—but not the obvious, simple path.

Click to shrink...

My first impulse is to call this a miracle of Greater Shattering.

My first impulse is wrong. But it might be worth talking about why for a bit.

Because, like, a Greater Shattering is for this sort of thing. It, um, it is a miracle of transforming into a gigantic symbolic monster.

Except, well - a Greater Shattering is painful. It's for when a Strategist is so hurt, so beaten down by circumstance that they have no choice but to shatter their presentation, their self-image, their Eide, and rampage as a pure extrusion of their Wyrd for a bit.

It's not a casual process, it's not a controlled process.

Also Seele's Wyrd score is garbage so Greater Shattering costs her eight Burn, yikes.

And the thing is, like - what Seele is doing here is not "shattering her presented image to rampage as a giant symbolic monster for a bit."

It's more, like - she needs to go somewhere, despite weird obstacles.

... That's a miracle of Navigation, of traveling by symbols and isomorphism rather than causality or physics. Navigation miracles are free, given Seele's quite high Lore attribute - she's pretty good at moving around in wibbly dream spaces like this; but not so good that she can causally use Greater Navigation to move around, which is much more like what Kiana is doing.

Like, the difference between lesser and greater Navigation is one of 'distance' crossed, sure; but mostly, that Greater Navigation creates a road where the lesser variant is more akin to backpacking. Seele's movement does not create useable pathways for other people.

Kiana and Sirin are sort of cheating by way of the Core of the Void, which I guess in this Glitch thing is ... probably a Gift? If I felt the need to give it mechanical force, it'd be a Gift, a prepackaged Greater Navigation miracle. I probably wouldn't, though; and instead would just go "yeah that's part of Sirin's Eide, as goddess-queen of the endless void."

(I am, um, working on a sheet for Sirin and Kiana. I can't help it.)

But anyway back to Seele -

Like; fundamentally what she's doing here is not "transform into a gigantic ocean-sized quantum butterfly."

It's "stop curling up into a teenager-shaped ball."

...

Honestly, given that Glitch's rules are pretty permissible regarding this sort of thing - I've seen a completely rules-compliant and entirely playable character sheet for a city - I think this isn't even, like, miraculous.

Seele's a giant quantum butterfly. Okay. Cool.

It's just a thing that is the case.

The second bit, where she moves into Kiana's dream, that's a miracle; but the actual curling/uncurling is just a mundane action.

1,583 words, rather. I was more loquacious than expected.

 

[Thelxiope]

Okay!

This is the third iteration of this sheet I've made. The first two were ... bad, and this one I'm still not sure about.

But anyway, since people continue to seem interested in this ongoing blather, behold! Sirin's character sheet!

The previous entry in this series, Seele and Veliona's sheet, is here, though I am in the process of revising it and will have an updated version ...eventually.

(CW: Death, destruction, dormancy, nihilism, general pessimism)

Spoiler: Sirin Schariac, Dying of Fate

Sirin Schariac
Dying of Fate
"I am the every font of victory:
an altar to the honor of the Host."​

Once upon a time, there was a girl who died.

She died because it was her fate to die. Because the laws of the world and the weave of dharma bent and warped to ensure she would die. Because she had seen the glitch - glimpsed, just for a moment, one of the flaws and faults and cracks that riddle reality - and thereafter her fate was mangled and broken by what she had seen.

The form her death took was the gradual erosion of her agency - the slow, steady winnowing away of any alternatives, until the girl found she had no choice, that there was no other way, that nothing she could do would change anything; that circumstances would hem her in until she died, alone and afraid and in pain. That any reprieve, any moments where it seemed like her choices mattered, were transient at best and outright fabrications at worst; and merely made the inevitable moment where the world tore that gossamer illusion away all the more painful.

And because the world is wrong, because the world is broken, even death didn't save her.

She died, yes; and then death spat her back out; and then fate and fortune and chance noticed and started trying to kill her once again. Over and over, again and again, and always, always the glitch kept coming for her.

She tried to run, and it followed. She tried to hide, and it found her. She tried to ignore it, and it came for her regardless.

In time, she tried to fight - to grasp the ragged tear in the world that had engulfed her, and pull - for what other leverage did she have?

She fought back against a world that was trying to kill her by tearing at the rips in the fabric of reality. And eventually, by degrees, that fight stopped being about survival and started being about tearing the world apart.

Because any world in which the glitch existed, any world that manifestly, obviously wrong -

Was not a world that deserved to exist.

The girl gathered friends, servants, allies and armies in the lands beyond Creation. She rode back across the Weirding Wall at the head of a great host, to make an ending of the Ash and all the worlds that hang from its boughs - for why should these things exist? Why, when they are shot through, tainted to the core, with the glitch? Why, when they were built on the bones and suffering of Ninuan, of the True and Silvered Land that came before the world?

She fought, and killed, and died; and rose to fight again. She burned worlds and cut entire concepts, screaming, out of the tapestry of creation. She dueled with gods and assassinated angels. She was glorious. She was terrible.

And nothing she did made the world even the tiniest bit less broken. Nothing she did ever moved her even a single step towards escaping from the glitch. Nothing she did ever brought her safety, or joy, or the peaceful life she'd wanted, back when she started.

Cecilia Schariac, the late Power of Moonlight, forged those realizations into a lance - wounding herself mortally, to seal those truths into steel and silver - and with it struck the girl down.

Pinned to that desolate branch of the Ash where their duel had come to a close, the girl began to cry: in guilt, over what she'd done; in frustration, at how yet again, everything she'd tried to escape her fate had been for nothing; and in terror, because even a being as relatively immortal as a Strategist fears death.

Strategists, perhaps, fear it, and have cause to fear it, more than most.

And Cecilia, herself dying, held the crying girl; the lonely, frightened child, lashing out at a world that refused to stop hurting her, for no rhyme or reason or fault of her own.

Cecilia held the dying girl, and brushed her hair, and hummed lullabies into her ear, and called the girl her daughter; even as the Rule-Lord Otto Apocalypse severed the entire branch of the Ash on which they lay and cast it into the flames of the Weirding Wall, to ensure the girl's demise.

The girl had time for one last thing, before the flames consumed her:

She made a wish that - if, by some unprecedented miracle, she could have another chance, another life, free from the burden of the glitch and the war - that she could get to be Cecilia's daughter for more than five minutes.

Wishes and miracles, it must be said, are slightly more efficacious in the hands of a Noble and a Strategist than they are for us mere mortals.

---

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived.

Her name was - is - Kiana Kaslana.

She did not have the best life, but also far from the worst. She had a father who loved her, a doting godmother; friends, a home, a family.

She was happy. She laughed, and loved, and was loved -

And if, at times, it felt like the world was constricting around her, cutting off her choices, forcing her down certain paths -

It was just a feeling. There was nothing behind it.

The glitch wasn't after her, after all.

And, curled up at the bottom of her soul, Sirin Schariac slept, untroubled, dreaming the gentle dreams that filtered down to her from Kiana's life.

It couldn't last.

Some things cannot be outrun. The glitch cannot be waited out. And if wishes and miracles sufficed, to fight the glitch -

If a true and daring heart, if hope, if faith and love could take on the fundamental wrongness of the world and win, once and forever -

well -

then the world wouldn't be wrong.

---

Avatar Diagram
Star of Bethlehem (X), the Key of the Scarred
You turned away from the war suddenly, as a result of a single, transformative moment. You cling to it, to the memories of it, to remind you of how far you've come - and of why you can't go back.
Heart - DISCONTINUITY
What happened, broadly speaking?

• Cecila called me her daughter.
• Cecilia died, because I don't get to have happy endings.
• Cecilia forced me to realize what I was doing - the cost, and how futile it all was.
• My fate and wyrd are already set in stone - but that doesn't mean I can't fiddle with some of the details.

Shadow - BUILT ON THE ASHES
...and what did it do to you, specifically?

• Clinging
• I must remember

Water Lily (XIV), the Key of Retreat
You don't want any of this - any more fighting, any more struggle against a fate you can't change. You just want to curl up and sleep inside Kiana's soul. But you can't. Why?
Heart - SANCTUARY
What makes hiding so tempting?

• I just want to hide and let Kiana live for both of us.
• If I hide in my sanctuary, I can avoid my doom, for a while.
• All I can do outside is doom things to die, just as I am doomed. I don't want to.
• My pet dragon Benares is cute and cuddly and adorable.
• Otto is out there. I'm safe in here.
• St. Freya's is … noisy, and busy, and literally on the front lines of the war. It's full of annoying, mistrustful people, like Ai or Theresa or Bronya or Fu Hua. I don't like it. But it has Kiana, so I guess I have to tolerate it.

Shadow - CURSED
...and why can't you actually do it?

• Creation has tainted me
• Hiding is behaviour unbecoming a queen of Ninuan.
• Kiana is a sweetie, and I don't want her to be hurt.
• Maybe there's room to be the good kind of fairytale royalty.
• Kiana is mom's daughter, too. She's my little sister. I need to look after her.
• Mei can't save me. She can't save us. She has to stop before she kills herself, or worse.
• Kiana's friends are going to get themselves killed. What the hell was Theresa thinking, enlisting children in the war?

Convergence
Certain things belong to the Heart of both of your Keys, reinforce both parts of your story. Which things, and how?

• Fate and wyrd alike demand my death.
• I just want the hurting to stop. ☆

Game Traits
Infection
Sirin is fated to die. When she was younger, this fate took different forms from one brief, tormented period of life to the next; after her declaration of war against the world, though, her fate crystallized: she made herself an enemy of the world, and so the world has decreed that she will die as one of its enemies.

As Sirin's Infection mounts, fate and chance cut away at her options, attempting to force her into over-the-top villainy. She can resist this, can fight back, to an extent - but eventually, her Infection will manufacture some situation where Sirin has no choice - whether through coercion, mind control, or because all alternatives are morally unacceptable - but to commit some crime in the eyes of the Nobilis, and be branded once more an enemy of the world.

The act of choosing - particularly, making important choices - aggravates Sirin's Infection. In her Sanctuary, where her choices have no great impact upon world or void, and thus do not count, she is safe … for a time.
Eide 3 - Defined
Eide is the Dream-of-Self, a reflection of the narrative nature of the void. It is Sirin's ability to be perceived as she wishes to be perceived.

Sirin built her Eide during her time in the war, and has had little time to try and update it - she was sleeping for fifteen years, and just woke up. As a result, her presentation is still that of a Queen of Ninuan; of the distant and imperious queen of a far-off land, half primordial chaos, half fairy-tale country, and a third half the home of the enemies of all that Is.
Technique - Unland Royalty
This is a Technique of being a goddess-queen of the lands beyond the world. It allows Sirin to do appropriately void-queen-like things, such as rule the λ-things of Ninuan, scorn the disgusting products of Creation, destroy things, inspire fear or awe, lounge about menacingly on some doomful throne, etc.

Sirin doesn't really want to do any of those things anymore, and is actively attempting to change her Eide. She's tacking towards more of a 'fairytale princess' sort of vibe, but it will take time to redefine how world and void perceive and relate to her.
Flore 2 - Envoy
Flore is the art of awakening hidden potentials in the things of Creation. It is Sirin's power to guide, protect, and empower people and things of this wretched world.

It is, perhaps, a measure of how entangled Sirin has become with the world she once set out to destroy.

Flore 2 is still a fairly light entanglement - Sirin spends much of her time alone in her Sanctuary, not engaging with the world - but it still suggests that she has, in some fashion, a foot in both Ninuan and Creation.
Treasures
Kiana Kaslana
Sirin's little sister, her closest friend, her host. Presumably as a result of Sirin and Cecilia's wish, Sirin's Sanctuary - the little waylet she calls home - is lodged inside of Kiana's soul. For fifteen years, Sirin slept there in peace, dreaming slow and warm and gentle dreams, colored by Kiana's life. Now, Sirin is awake, and spends much of her time in her Sanctuary, looking out through Kiana's eyes and offering the occasional backseat miracle.
Lore 2 - Dustcloak
Sphere - λ-Destined Things
Sirin's Sphere, the things of Ninuan which she may bind and control, are those relics and hangers-on which litter the epics and fairytales of the Not. She may lay claim to foretold enemies, fated allies, or artifacts destined to be wielded by some heroine yet unborn, and appropriate them for her own use, for a time.
Arcana
Benares
Sirin has a pet dragon - an ancient, apocalyptic terror, originally fated to die to some fabled heroine whose story will now never come to pass, as she was swallowed up by Creation in the moments of its birth and lost.

Benares is mostly akin to a gigantic scaly cat, when she is not busy being a cute girl, and keeps Sirin company in her Sanctuary.
Wyrd 5 - Postulant
Wyrd is the Dream-of-Being. It is the self beneath the self, the true face of the story Ninuan is using the Strategist to tell. It is a measure of how deeply a Strategist understands their own fate and nature.

Sirin has learned that it is not merely the chaotic jumble of Creational destiny that has doomed her - rather, it is her wyrd-nature that causes her to be again and again doomed to die. Her Wyrd - the story Ninuan writ for her to act out - is one of futile struggle.

But she also cannot escape the understanding that the world is wrong. That Ninuan was something good and beautiful, that her wyrd was something soft and kind and pastoral, once - before Creation's crafting. That this ruined world is responsible for all of her suffering.

It's just - killing the world isn't really fixing anything. So she'll have to try something else.
Sanctuary - The Empty Waylet
There's nothing much in Sirin's Sanctuary. A sourceless warmth, a gentle light from somewhere, a comfortable place to rest, curled up against her dragon - and an awareness of the outside, of Kiana and her life and her actions in the wider world, which Sirin can watch without having to actually venture into the wide, frightening world.
Destruction - The Foreboding Wyrd
Sirin may ordain that something, anything, is soon to die - and it will be so. She doesn't get to specify the exact details, and there's room for even mortals to try and duck out if it, though it won't be easy; but otherwise, she need merely point at a thing, and declare that its doom is near at hand - and it is.
Ability 0 - Hopeless
Some people are good at … at living in the world. At paying attention, at keeping things in order, at accomplishing tasks. At being an adult, more or less.

For others, this is really hard.

Sirin is part of this latter camp.
Geasa
Cecilia's Other Daughter
"My mother is Cecilia Schariac, and I am her daughter."
The lingering metaphysical weight of Sirin and Cecilia's wish manifests as a Geas, as a law of Sirin's nature and the way she interacts with the world.

Mostly, this means that her status as Ceciia's daughter is unquestionable - it is true, it is manifestly obvious to miraculous senses, and any attempt to make it not true runs into a Ward with a strength equal to Sirin's Wyrd.

I didn't get to do a name for Seele, so I was very excited when Sirin, to my surprise, turned out to be an intelligible and vaguely-appropriate Ninuanni name!

"Victory-Honor," if you want to be depressingly literal; probably something more like "Honorable Victory," "Victory With Honor," or "Honor's Victory" if you aren't a huge pedant.

Sirin doesn't remember her name from before she glitched, and so still goes by Sirin even though she is definitely not in the business of winning honorable victories for the Excrucian Host anymore. Given some time to think about it, I suspect she will probably end up deciding her name is a variant on Selin - "Gentle One" - and switching to that luthe instead:

"I am white florets in the snow; respite..."

It, um, just sort of trails off there because the "One" element doesn't have a name-poem fragment associated with it.

Seele is obvs not a Ninuanni name, nor does she have one, except maybe as a nickname from Veliona. 'Veliona' can't be constructed from the Ninuanni roots we know, but the very similar 'Valianna'

("Ghost-life," which I suppose would probably be read as something more akin to "Phantom"? The luthe, the name-poem, would be something along the lines of:
"Feel the wicked, blood-stained claw now curled 'round your beating heart:
I will not die today.")

can, which I'm willing to write off as dialectical shifts or regional variation.