The carefully crafted account of the trials both girls have endured took them almost up to the middle of dusk, with most of the details focusing on the trials on the other side. Axln was certain that this presentation of the most desired details would compel a strongly convincing argument to gain the support the two girls desired.

“Oh my.. so you two are actually the thieves then.” “Wait, what?” “I mean, certainly nothing about it sounds like you two expected anything to go wrong, it just did.. a lot. Your story also didn’t account for what Lyun was doing around the start of your tale, like you were intentionally getting rid of it, but certainly passing through the veil would be a perfect way to escape the void. You did mention a short stay in a transit terminal.. which is also where rumors have spawned of two individuals having vanished into a puff of void. Certainly, both cases would be related, even the foundry’s case had accounted for that.” “But we…” “Yes, you never accounted for things to go awry. The foundry are just fools, fools who believe they can covit an artifact of the world that more belongs to the world itself than any of society. That artifact is called the world’s seed, the original stone fragment taken from Celese that was responsible for revitalizing our entire world. With such an act, the fragment itself is little more than a husk, having fed itself to the world. However, the energies of the fragment are of the source beyond worlds, it has become not just a fragment of a world but a fragment of the source. This gives it a connection to the veil of worlds, very possibly something you had somehow tapped into.” Jhez had pulled out an information instrument and was scouring it for information as he spoke, while Axln found it intriguing how the entire thing reminded her of an off-tech of her holo.. more like an old-fashioned laptop that was founded on new principles. She was still mostly concerned about how much trouble they were going to get into.. but somehow no one seemed to mind being in the presence of thieves like themselves. They weren’t really thieves anyway, after all, more like a genius study so far.

“So, what’s hiding under the white gloves anyway? Can I see? … Ah, nice, a touch of the void. It’s remarkable how the immediate contact with the void doesn’t instantly negate all of your own elements and thus kills you, but I expect that’s negotiated with your connection to the veil. It does mean though that if you lost such a connection without restoring your arm first, you would probably perish. You said that the other world’s version also drains things, but follows how such a drain would apply to that world. Actually, I can also see some of your inspiration for the arm now too, your other arm already has a point of contact which currently distinguishes between two very different states of existence. But it’s marvelous how you managed to redesign the integration of elements to such a purpose, that’s a profound ability. Undeniably, this is the sort of thing that creates history, something none of us could afford to simply dismiss. Now, on your side, I know you’re just trying to make ends meet and bring your inspirations to life, but it's clear you’re lost in how to deal with the circumstances brought upon you. Dealing with all of this measure of two worlds would be a mess, especially when you are both trapped to the same world, let alone the threat presented by the void. It is for these things that I would like to offer our help, and I see everyone agrees. Don’t worry, the wardens and the foundry will not catch you here so easily, you have only just arrived after all. It might even be possible to extract the fragment, return it to the vault, and thus bring the foundry out of the problem. There really isn’t any rational alternative either, so we’ll just find a way to make you feel more comfortable here.” Jhez was having the full support of his colleagues here, him being a sort of leader to them being a bit of an impact. His arguments were most of such an impact, absolutely undeniable to them.

“Oh, thank you. I was beginning to wonder what we would be forced to do next, considering we have no way back home right now.” “Axln, we could just take another phasecraft back.” “No we can’t. I already said, the foundry had closed off the borders, the phasecraft we took was the last before the closure. Our driver had been talking about it, you missed such. We no longer have a way back home.” Axln sighed as Lyun just stared blankly, the truth of that matter finally hitting home. Fortunately, their new hosts were very accommodating, with the academy providing them hospitality in consideration for both the recommendations of their archive friends as well as the fact that the foundry was not providing room for rational alternatives. The two of them were provided with personal accommodations not far from the archives. Axln was happy that it wasn’t cardinally far from their side of the archives, but she wasn’t used to the idea of having independent dormitory-style rooms disconnected from the cluster, all scattered underground. The only sign she was part of a cluster was that there was a uniform way underground for her assigned cluster leading to each individual unit. It really was a quite unique experience.

A few days later, the two of them had already found themselves integrated into the academy. Lyun was given her own creator space to work with, an aspect of their discovery process, with a vast collection of resources to work with sensibly to the cause of new discovery. The equipment made everything she had waiting for her back home seem cheap and pitiful in comparison, this was some quality stuff. The kyuemu shards were the purest she had ever seen before. With it, she started work on some quality parts to replace their original prototypes, things she knew she would have to leave to Axln’s care when Axln had time to spare. Axln herself was very occupied with lessons on the world, a fitting use of academy space. Her studies included some of the basic principles of the elements that Lyun had started upon, delivered to her by ersatz teachers. Axln had in turn also devoted herself to an interest in ersatz, spending considerable time with them. There was in turn quite a lot for her to learn.

However, one thing that had come up quickly was her reading ability in this world. Certainly, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t read at all, it was that she couldn’t read this world’s writing. Lyun had even accounted for her own struggles with the same in the other world. Thus, Axln had applied herself to learning to read some of the scripts of this world. Such was not an easy process, but having a grasp of both generic writing and the specific language made things a bit easier for her. What proved to cause the most problems was in pronunciation, the distinct accents making it difficult for Axln to compensate for what sound she was aiming for in writing. In the process, she had taken to heart a strong need for developing the alternate pronunciations used in speech, a lesson she had applied to undertaking of her own volition. Another rough problem she had with reading still remained in her sight. Certainly, writing close up wasn’t as much of a problem, but reading signs from a distance away could be very difficult for her.

Lyun took account of this, the discussion they had on the subject, and the realization of her discovery goals expected by the archives and thus the academy. She could still remember the glasses Lyun wore, but obviously knew little how they worked. However, she knew that the principles behind them weren’t as important, the ways things work shifted between worlds. She also recalled that Axln had mentioned the existence of better solutions, stuff a conduit wasn’t permitted. She still felt this was terrible, and her own sight shift between worlds built up so much empathy in turn. She was determined to make something that didn’t just offer regular vision, but furthered upon the sort of thing they were already doing, augmenting the base principles of the body with instrumentation. She had learned the word for it from the Terran Mythos, and there certainly was no problem with borrowing yet another Terran word for another Terran inspiration. Cybernetics. In this case though, there wasn’t any wound to work from, and she certainly wasn’t going to make one. What she needed then was to make an instrument as non-intrusive as possible, something that just infused onto flesh and provided a mental image to the user, capturing what was being seen in the process with greater detail.

Her end product accounted for this with a clarity that exemplified what her creation intended to offer. Of course, as a conduit by nature, Axln had lived her whole life with what was basically a blue crystal embedded in her forehead. The poor woman now was enduring life as a human without such familiarities. The entire thing thus was designed as a sort of third eye, sitting in the same location as a cortex, but itself embedded in a sort of circlet that wrapped around the head. The band was designed with carefully crafted links based upon their own cybernetic parts, the entire thing could thus be actively fused to Axln’s forehead.. and just as easily removed. While fuzed, it delivered direct visions into Axln’s mind, and itself was regulated as an instrument. This provided an edge for Axln, who could rewrite such commands at will to control the type of image she saw. Lyun was almost embarrassed, realizing that her creation would offer Axln a sense of sight that would by far exceed her own. Such didn’t itself matter, she could certainly look into her own needs later, even possibly addressing discomforts of the other world if she so desired by then.

“Shit, I was right.” “Axln, don’t startle me like that, please!” “Sorry. You have to hear this though, I just traced how far this rabbit hole goes.” “A what hole?” “Nevermind. I mean I made a huge discovery about our shifting between worlds. I know how we can control it, I know how to measure where we go, and I just figured out how far that extends. Aestus, Ruixse, they aren’t just two worlds, they are parallel worlds. The maps of both places, they all correspond to matching places on each. If we swapped right now, we would end up in a very specific place the same distance away from my office as we are from your workshop, and in the same cardinal direction. That’s how it's worked every time.. but more than just our place in the world, it seems there is a macroscopic level to all of this. Earth, Celese, they are both the exact same distance from our worlds. I looked at a cosmic map, there is a direct conversion for everything. Aestus is part of the Centri System of the Orion Nebula in the Laniakae Supercluster. Ruixse is part of the Yhndaeqi Star Cluster in the Atrieyn Cosmic Layer of the Etenihq Cosmic Plain. All of those are parallels.” Axln looked absolutely stunned, though Lyun was more impressed at how well Axln had managed the accent switch. Axln still sounded off, but it was pretty good.

“The thing that stuns me the most is still, this was a dead world. Celese came here much like Earth came to my world, but all accounts say that Celese arrived at a dead rock without any signs of life ever existing. That.. that’s been pretty mind-blowing, honestly. I know, I shouldn’t compare the two so much, Celese had done a far better job at cultivating another world than Earth in my opinion, but it wasn’t even the same situation. In all accounts, I’m the most foreign person to this world and the most local to this world of anyone here, having been the only one with an eternity of ancestors that were founded in that variance of world. Everything adds up.. but that. Why? Why was it impossible for my ancestors of this variance to make a life in this world? It might be that the laws between each simply made it impossible to sustain life on this side, that would really be the most sensible answer, I know… Even so, I worry that such isn’t the real answer, that something instead happened and it’s leaving me feeling responsible to discover the truth.” Axln slumped against the wall, the weight of her own expectations hitting upon her. Lyun sighed, expecting that some of this stemmed from conduit treatment on the other world. Of course, that would mean she would be in no position to deny it, being a Celese descendant would make her no better than the treatment from Earth’s descendants. However, it wasn’t like she was about to dig into why elves just didn’t exist on the other side, her own parallel in the whole deal. They simply didn’t, that was well and good enough. It might have been a little upsetting that they might have a Terran Mythos, while there never was a Celesi Mythos on the other side or anything.. but that was completely different.

“Well, speaking of being responsible for discoveries, how is your arm doing? I noticed you attached the new one, and I hope being here means you have time to swap out my own upgrades.” “It’s really nice having an arm that again looks normal when I want it to look normal, it feels so natural.. even if it’s far too capable to be called that. Anyway, where is your stuff? Let’s show you what I mean with your own version.” Lyun brought the new parts while Axln set up space for the installation. A short swap later, Lyun found herself with some really normal-looking legs, it was actually impossible for even her enhanced senses to tell where real ended and cybernetic began. They were even designed to improve the natural ability of her legs with some instrumental augmentation. She suspected her own running ability would far surpass the average person, let alone her kicking strength. She didn’t have the leg durability that Axln’s arm had, but she certainly had her own quirks. On the matter of senses and advantages though, she presented Axln with yet another gift, the finished circlet. Axln got a re-account for what the circlet was designed for, and took to the process of getting that too set up. Attaching it to her forehead.. such was simply similar to how the actually uninjured parts of Lyun’s leg adapted to cybernetics. Considering her own sight and the gesture implied, Axln was all too thankful for the gift.

Axon finished her circlet installation and turned the thing on, blinking for a moment inadvertently as she adjusted to the sudden perspective shift. Of course, even while blinking, she could still see. With even her regular eyes closed, her new eye was a lens to the world providing a crisp image of everything around that made even her glasses seem insignificant. She even found it easy to control with her own impulses, shifting her cybernetic perspective around quickly as easily as her own natural eyes. She even adjusted the focus, letting her see fine details on the distant wall. She gave Lyun a huge hug, immensely appreciating the gift. Something like this could do so much for her, it was going to be awesome. However, in that same moment, Axln came to the same realization as Lyun had, this was Lyun’s own advantage surrendered. Axln was determined to find something for Lyun in turn, something to share in return for this advantage. She didn’t know what she might be able to pull off on this side, but certainly she would look for something on her own side. Maybe her nanites could help with such speculations, or something.

“Excuse me, but I’m here to guide Axln back to her studies.” An ersatz took this opportunity to interrupt the speculations. “Oh, it’s that time again. Speaking of, Lyun, can you make me a watch?” “A what? You have another eye, what else are you going to watch?” “Oh, not that. I mean something small that can keep track of the time that I can keep handy. Adding it to this cybernetic arm around the wrist would work, it fits a sort of legacy design. I usually have my nanites reporting the time for me, it’s been feeling weird not having such a measure here. I know there is a time system for your planet, I’m fine with it reporting on that. It should just track how many moments and instants since the day began, with plenty of features tracking time in different ways. In return, I’ll try to be capable of reading it by the time you’re done.” Axln was quickly gone at that, leaving Lyun to ponder the sudden new request. Certainly, this was another novelty from the Terran Mythos, though it wasn’t something she was fully aware of. Axln meanwhile seemed far too aware of it, as if she had already studied the local implementation. Lyun knew there was a precise way to calculate time, she just never had to worry about it before. It certainly, though, wouldn’t be a hard request, especially if they were attaching it to the crystalline arm. Lyun just shrugged as she began her work, curious where this would go.

Axln returned to her reading attempt, a struggle she had still failed to fully endure. She was making progress in pronunciation, but reading was still highly elusive. This was another thing she missed her nanites for, they would be capable of reading strange scripts and translating such, no problems. Here, she was without such measures, left with nothing she could train to read scripts for her.. or was she? Drawing her attention to her circlet, she revised the implementation of its function so that it would resolve seeing the script in her more familiar text. This was not an easy process, considering she didn’t fully understand the script and the entire premise of how stuff worked was in matters of understanding. This resulted then in a quick spread of numerous errors, errors which her ersatz quickly pointed out.. and errors she then quickly corrected in the function of her circlet. The result was weird, she could still see with her natural eyes the strange scrawl before her, but her cybernetic eye viewed such scrawl as something which made sense in her head. Before going to bed, she already had the technique perfected.. but she knew better than to simply call it with that. She would still need to be capable of doing such a thing naturally as well, this wasn’t enough to settle everything.. but it was quite the improvement.

Things were steadily improving for the two girls, both having discovered an outlet for their talents, an apt distraction from their other problems. Even so, certainly things couldn’t simply stay this way forever.