Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Master Wizard Rigelia was a fat, narcissistic force of nature who had clearly never found a person she couldn’t push around, if not with her words, than with her mastery over Orange magic. Those who crossed her were generally shoved out of the way until they were in a “better mood;” according to Rigelia anyway, though in practice it was generally Rigelia’s mood that had to improve before headway could be made. But, at least, she was technically intelligent and knew her way around academic pursuits.

Duchess Tilenii Kroan was not. She lacked the blatant hypocrisy painted all over Rigelia, but this made for a hard woman who was much less fun to watch from a distance. The woman was aging and boring. It seemed like she knew nothing about the existence of “fun” and instead only spoke of economic policy, tangible benefits, and efficiency; all without actually understanding how any of these things would come about from their scientific work.

Blue hated both of them.

Rigelia’s opinion on Blue seemed to change hourly, confusing Blue considerably. Some moments she found Blue cute and amusing in a way not unlike a dumb pet. Other times she found Blue absolutely insufferable and shoved her out of the room before she could even speak a sentence. Still other times she would pretend to listen to Blue, laugh, and then proceed to say “that’s wrong so…” while clearly not having actually considered any of Blue’s points. Which made it even more baffling when she then included Blue’s ideas anyway…

Tilenii was, at least, consistent. Consistent in her clear distaste of… life, it seemed. Nothing made her smile. Blue knew she was fortunate that Rigelia was around, because the wizard got most of Tilenii’s ire rather than Blue herself. Blue almost didn’t exist in the noble’s eyes—to her, Blue was a consultant, one with knowledge, not someone to actually involve in the making of decisions.

And yet the three of them had to work together on reconstructing the Skyseed.

Which was why Blue was currently staring, dumbfounded, at the shell of a new Skyseed sitting in a royal warehouse, missing only the inner workings and crystal drive. It was slightly different from the previous Skyseed, for there were no fins and the jar was more squat to make it less prone to tumble end-over-end. There was a brass lid on the bottom and one attached to the lid. Someone would just have to go in and work the glass and steel supports to the crystal drive and… it’d be done.

“…How long has it been?” Blue asked.

“Nine days, two hours, fifteen seconds,” Tilenii said, adjusting her glasses. She was a teal gari who kept her hair short, the only features being two long spikes of it pointing back just behind her ears, while the rest of the strands were smoothed into a ball-like shape. “It could have been faster.”

“Really?” Blue said, frowning. “Considering how much time we spent shouting…”

“That is specifically the time I am counting as wasted.”

Rigelia snorted. “You’re a lost cause if you think that wasn’t necessary.”

“Proper etiquette exists for a reason, Wizard Rigelia.”

“Hah. No. That’s just what they want you to think.”

“I assure you, such decorum is very much a necessity…”

“That decorum sure fell apart after I gave my talk,” Blue grumbled.

“Ooooh, the little unicorn thinks she understands us!” Rigelia said with a hearty laugh.

“See, I have a name, and I know you know it, because you’ve used it before.”

“You should be looking at her, Tilenii, she’s the defiant one who upsets the decorum.”

“She is not in a position of authority by which to abuse it,” Tilenii said. “It is people like you who enable such behavior.”

Rigelia’s smile turned into a sneer. “I’m sorry, I think you just said that she was my fault. Care to elaborate on that?”

“It would be fruitless, as you would push me away. You are likely to do so even as I mention this.”

“I do not just push people away!”

“I could cite…”

Blue sighed, walking away from the two of them. She did not need to hear them argue about who was worse and who was responsible for her. The entire thing was ruining what should have been a great moment, another Skyseed approaching completion. It was amazing how fast things could be done when the Crown wanted them done in the capital of Kroan. They already had multiple Orange wizards training to levitate themselves with similar apparatus to what Jeh had used to learn. One of them would take the Skyseed II out for a test ride as soon as it was finished. Not to space, though, just up, the Academy was concerned about safety. Which, Blue supposed, was reasonable, Orange wizards weren’t Jeh.

Still, Blue should have been excited, and she had been. Had.

Now she just felt grumpy. She walked outside of the warehouse into one of the royal courtyards, scowling.

I wish I was back in Willow Hollow.

“Heeeeeeeey! Look who it is Tenii! Look look!”

“I see, Vi,” Tenrayce said, though she didn’t look up from her book. “Greetings, Blue.”

“Hey,” Blue said, managing a smile at seeing the two princesses. Tenrayce was in her wizard robes, while Vi was in something pink, blue, and with a lot of fabric tendrils that connected to her hair in a spider-web-like arrangement.

“What are the odds!?” Vi said, hands on her hips. “We weren’t even looking for you!”

“We were going to the warehouse where she works, the odds were quite high,” Tenrayce said.

“Oh. Uh. Well. Still!”

“It is admittedly good to see her.” Tenrayce flipped a page. “How goes the work?”

“The work goes fine, the people…” Blue shivered. “Egh…”

“I see you have run aground of one of Father’s more… dubious ruling strategies,” Tenrayce observed.

“Wait, what? This was intentional?”

“He often puts people in situations where they would be forced to work together in order to improve them not only as workers, but as people.”

Blue blinked. “He… he knew we would shout at each other?”

“Even I knew that,” Vi said, waving a hand dismissively—and getting it caught in the web of hair-fabric she had. “Ow, hey…”

“It is a common ploy of his,” Tenrayce continued. “It has mixed results, sometimes it works, sometimes it results in the house on Umber Road burning down for the sake of a joke. Yes, that is a specific event, no, you do not need to know the details, yes, I am just telling you about it to make you curious and squirm.”

Blue rolled her eyes. “I can live without knowing.” That is going to bug me for days. “But I am annoyed that… this didn’t have to happen… but…” she frowned, remembering her experiences in Willow Hollow, with Vaughan… how they didn’t really get along at first, but now… how Xerxes had set it up… “Okay I can see how maybe it would work, but… but… dangit, I want to argue.”

“Arguing with the King is generally an unwise course of action, and not because he’s likely to retaliate. He is likely to prove you wrong.”

“Unless you’re me!” Vi said, grinning. “None of it gets into my head! Dense as a brick!”

“Technically speaking, you are a lot less dense than a brick, you’re mostly water,” Blue said. “Though we’ll have to submerge you to figure out for sure.”

“Ooooh, you want to do science on my head?”

“We sure can’t do science with your head,” Tenrayce said.

All three of them chuckled.

Blue was struck by the sudden realization that she was friends with these two. With the princesses of the Kingdom of Kroan. How absurd was that? It wasn’t exactly the most absurd thing that had happened, but… it was nice. To not feel like she was completely surrounded by enemies.

Though she supposed she did have one other ally, although her feelings on that ally were… complicated.

“Anyway…” Vi said, coughing. “I think we should go out for lunch!”

Tenrayce finally looked up from her book. “Vi, have you already forgotten why we’re out here?”

“No, but that message to the overseers can wait, they can stand to be less ‘everything happens on the hour all the time!’ We can be late. They can’t do anything to us. It’ll be good for them.” She crossed her arms. “See? I can be like Father too!”

Tenrayce scratched her chin. “Hmm… now, my motives are a lot less pure than yours, but I would be quite satisfied to send those timekeeping railroaded plebeians into a panic for a day… sure, lunch is good. Coming, Blue?”

“You sure it’s okay, people are going to stare,” Blue pointed out.

“People stare at us anyway,” Vi said, waving a dismissive hand. “Though I really do ask for it with this hair. But come on, how can I not have it sculpted? We have all this money and so many master hairdressers that it would be rude not to make use of them!” She struck a pose, somehow managing not to trip over the various ribbons everywhere. “You’re the one who has to be okay with being stared at!”

“Plus, you’re not gari, that removes a lot of the gossip ammunition,” Tenrayce added. “So, yes, to lunch.”

“Ahem! Tenrayce! Blue hasn’t actually agreed yet! She has to consider if she’s okay with it.”

“I am perfectly fine,” Blue said. “I don’t intend to stay in Axiom forever, so any awkwardness will vanish when I leave. For me.” She smirked. “Not for you.”

“And now we’re good!” Vi said. “Okay, so… where to go…?”

“Consider this:” Tenrayce began. “Disguise ourselves so we can go to that little slime chef on Sugarpowder Street.”

“Oooooh… but he’ll recognize us… and might make a scene… and then get his cart torn down again…”

“If he has not learned his lesson that will be his own doing. You will have to deal with your hair, though, if you want to be disguised.”

“Hmmmm… but the hair…” Vi tapped her foot. “Yeah, sorry, Tenii, I’m hungry and it’d take too long to pull all this down. Let’s just go to the square.”

“Reasonable.” Tenrayce said, starting to walk that direction. “Though… the square is where the last murder happened.”

Blue perked her ears up. “Wait, really?”

“It was in the middle of the night and done stealthily,” Tenrayce said. “But yes, another one turned up two days ago.”

“How do you not know!?” Vi blurted. “It’s the talk of the town! Mysterious murders being carried out by some kind of plast dragon imitator!”

“I live in the warehouse, basically,” Blue said. “When do I have time to get news other than from you two?”

“So sad… you need more friends,” Vi said. “I can help you with that!”

Tenrayce looked up from her book, frowning. “Vi…”

“Ashhhhh! I know you don’t think my methods are great, but I have helped many people get more friends.”

“Look, I appreciate the offer,” Blue said. “But you two are fine, I like spending all my time on science.”

“No matter how much you may wish otherwise, dear Vi…” Tenrayce smiled warmly. “You will be forced to admit that she and I are cut from the same cloth.”

“She’s a lot less annoying than you,” Vi countered.

“Give her time.”

They left the palace grounds and entered the main streets of Axiom. As expected, people started staring. Blue found it more than a little unnerving, but Vi and Tenrayce continued talking as if nothing was wrong, though occasionally Vi would stop and ask Blue if she was doing all right, which she always said she was—though the repeated asking was making Blue doubt her own mental state.

They eventually arrived at the square, which was actually a circular area of town with no buildings that people could set up stalls in. It was not the marketplace—that was a far more organized location on the other side of Axiom. The square was where anyone and everyone could set up anything. Musicians, culinary artists, and other such things that were more suited for an unregulated environment. One would not find any rare or precious objects here, but delicious snacks would be on offer. Blue could already pick out the distinct smells of cooking meat, freshly grilled vegetables, and fried plast crisps. Naturally, some of the smells were completely disgusting to her physiology as a unicorn, but the mixture of everything became so much of an overload to the senses that it itself was a novelty.

Blue couldn’t wait to start trying things. Who knows, maybe she’d even try something unicorns didn’t usually eat…

“Blue!” Pepper shouted, suddenly behind her. “I’ve got something to show you!”

Blue’s eyes widened. “Uh, hi, Pepp—”

“Come on!” Pepper grabbed Blue by the hoof and started dragging her forward.

“Save me!” Blue called back to the princesses.

“Nope!” Vi said with a laugh. “Have fun!”

Blue was torn away from the promise of lunch… taken into the unknown by a crazed fire dryad.

“You are going to love this!”

“Pepper, please stop pulling me…” Blue grunted.

“But then you might run off and we can’t have that!” Pepper paused. “Okay, look, I know you probably wanted to have lunch but this is really amazing and I have to share it with someone and you’re the only one who can figure it out and and okay I’m sorry for grabbing you like that but…”

Blue recognized the look in Pepper’s eyes.

She’d felt it herself more than a few times.

“…All right, let’s go take a look.”

“SWEET! Thank Dia! HERE WE GO!”

~~~

The Western Ch’eni’tho lived in a single city on the Western border of the Shinelands. On one end metal stretched out as far as the eye could see, and on the other the dense forests of the Wild Kingdoms waited, their large trees and mushrooms beckoning weary travelers. The city itself was donut-shaped, arranged in a circle directly on the border. The city wasn’t particularly large, not that Jeh had any context for cities—several Willow Hollows could easily fit between the outer and inner rings of the donut, but it was a far cry from, say, Axiom.

The structures in the city were, for the most part, completely alien. Most were built around a mixture of rigid and plant trees that were clearly planted deliberately. As the trees grew, so did the structures, and what beautiful and perplexing things they were. Screw-like spirals without a roof or walls. Leaf-like platforms that had no clear way for anyone to get to them, even considering the impressive size of a Ch’eni’tho stride.

There were, however, some structures that resembled more ordinary houses, and these were kept along the inner ring of the city, built specifically to house non-rigids like Jeh, Envila, and any other visitors that might pass through. The houses had doors, little potted plants, and other quaint decorations that were nice but were always placed in awkward locations, as one would probably expect from giant metal spider creatures trying to build a home for creatures decidedly unlike them.

The ground Jeh’s bed was on was uneven. It was flat—perfectly flat—but flat at a very slight angle across the entire room. It wasn’t annoying enough for her to complain but it was annoying enough for her to notice. She would have preferred a rough dirt floor. The bed itself was also a little odd—a circular mattress made of some material that squished to match Jeh’s shape, apparently harvested from the local mushrooms. This, she had been told, was not a Ch’eni’tho oddity, but rather just the most common kind of bed in the nearest Wild Kingdoms. Jeh found it supremely disturbing but she was somehow asleep in minutes after touching it anyway.

Getting out of bed was always a chore, though, the mattress formed a weak seal on her flesh and she had to forcibly pry herself out of it every morning. She always felt wet afterward, but she never actually was, apparently it was just the texture of the material.

Was it still better than the ground…? It got her to sleep quicker…

She shook her head, pushing the thought out of her mind. She would occasionally resolve to try sleeping out in the open or just in a tree later, but inevitably she would arrive back at her room and be too lazy and tired to go out and look for a spot. She was always doing stuff.

The Western Ch’eni’tho were hospitable people, but they lived by a rather strict code that anyone who could work, should work in order to eat. Jeh liked food more than she liked sitting around doing nothing all day, so work she did. Today, though, was her day off, which meant she was free to do… whatever. Which was definitely preferable to moving around lots of boxes filled with metal and plant pieces.

She quickly left her room and walked down the hallway to the front door, stepping out… to the hole.

Now, the giant pit in the center of We’ir City was not right out her front door, and there was a railing that kept people from walking into it, but it was close enough to be uncomfortable. Three steps and she would have been able to look over the edge had the railing not been there. Here it was, nonetheless, the absolutely massive pit that went down as far as the eye could see until it became shrouded in great darkness.

The pit was not a natural structure, the Ch’eni’tho dug it, a representation of the “timelessness” they believed existed in the core of every being on Ikyu. Granted, the pit had a bottom, but the idea was to have a constant reminder of the concept of infinity, right there in the center of everything.

Jeh didn’t really understand representing a number larger than all other numbers with a hole of absolutely nothing, but when she asked for it to be explained the Ch’eni’tho started talking like Blue and it quickly became impossible for her to follow. They also spoke strangely, and it wasn’t just because many of them didn’t know Karli that well. They liked to declare their intentions and thoughts aloud… actually, now that she thought about it, the Eastern Ch’eni’tho had done that as well…

She shook her head, turning away from the pit. She’d seen it a dozen times already and she’d already jumped to the bottom just to see what would happen, there wasn’t anything else to think about down there. Just some hole. She had somewhere else to be—the hospital.

The hospital was one of the structures designed largely for Ch’eni’tho but had sections that could hold other beings, though these sections dangled from the hospital’s center spires and helixes by metal wires, making each “room” look like a large white fruit that hung from multiple trees at once. Jeh walked up to the fruit-room that held Envila’s bed, looking through the window to see that it was completely empty. Envila could be having an examination, eating something… or could have just walked off. She was strong enough to do that, now.

Guess I’ll just have to track her down later…

Instead of doing that, Jeh went to a Ch’eni’tho section of the hospital, slowly walking up a helical path while at least a dozen Ch’eni’tho scampered past her at much higher speeds. What she wouldn’t give to ride one of them again…

She eventually came to the “rigid maintenance platform,” where a certain watchlight was.

Where a certain watchlight was floating.

Jeh gasped. “They healed you!”

“Y-yes,” Jill said, turning to Jeh. “They… finally repaired all the damage and have allowed me to float freely once again.”

“Request: remain calm and still,” a Ch’eni’tho doctor said, tapping Jill with the tips of one of her blade-feet. “We have not confirmed your status yet. Observations are approaching acceptable parameters, but the uncertainty has not been eliminated.”

“Oh, okay…”

“I have detected disappointment in your tone. Talking with your friend is permissible.”

“It better be,” Jeh said with a grin. She looked for somewhere to sit down but there weren’t exactly chairs. Or even a wall to lean against. There was a table, but it had too much stuff on it. Jeh had to rely on her last resort: awkwardly pacing around the platform. “Are you doing alright?”

“Much better than I was, but…” Jill paused. “I’m not sure I was ever doing alright.”

“Eh?” Jeh tilted her head.

“Being forced into silence and great pain for an extended period of time forced me to think… a lot.”

“Ooooh, what about?”

Jill paused. “You… can’t read much, can you?”

Jeh cocked her head, frowning. “I… can tell you’re not talking about reading books. Am I missing some subtext? I… hold on, don’t tell me, let me think. Um…” Jeh tapped her foot. “Okay, you got to thinking, thinking related to not doing alright… but since you’re talking about it you were just going to tell me what it was that was the matter?” Jeh put on a grin. “Riiiiight?”

“…You know, I somehow expected both less and more of you at once. Setting myself up for confusion.”

Jeh nodded. “Yeah, don’t recommend that. So….” Jeh kicked her foot back and forth. “What were you thinking about?”

“…I kept asking myself why I was traveling with you.”

“Didn’t you just think it would be fun?”

Jill stared at her. “…Jeh. I’m from this side of the Shinelands. I crossed it myself once. I already met the other Ch’eni’tho and the other dangers. There were many things you did not see. Terrible, horrific things. I should never have come. Yet I did. I just… refused to think about any of it. I didn’t even really warn you about much… I just…” Jill paused. “I wasn’t right in the head, to use the expression.”

“Well, that’s something you and I share.” Jeh tapped herself in the head with her knuckles. “Everything up there’s really scrambled.”

“…How you can know that and be fine with it, I’ll never know.” Jill looked at the ground. “I am not fine with the way I was… I am? I don’t know anymore. I… I think I was following you because I wanted to go home, something I told myself I didn’t care about anymore. I… think I was using you? Sort of?”

“Psh, it’s okay,” Jeh said, waving a dismissive hand. “I was going across anyway.”

“But… but I…” Jill let out a series of beeps.

“Calm,” the doctor said.

“You heard her, she just…” Jill stopped herself. “My goodness, I’m getting angry for no reason.”

“Yeah, I am kind of confused about that…?” Jeh admitted.

“Well, you see. Um. Umm…” Jill was silent for a moment. “Look, I had an image in my head of how I wanted this conversation to go and this was not it, but it’s not a bad result, and I think that makes it worse somehow?”

“I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it either.”

“Good! Then we’re in the same boat!”

“…Jeh has anyone ever told you your relentless optimism can be aggravating?”

“I… don’t think so?” Jeh tapped her chin. “My memory’s not the best, though.”

“Observation: I personally think you two are dwelling too long on this issue,” the doctor said as she wrapped up her inspection of Jill. “For I have finished my readings and you seem to be running circles around each other in the conversation. Emotional closure is not a guarantee or a necessity of proper function.”

Jeh and Jill stared at her blankly.

“Or perhaps my input is not welcome in this engagement, if so, I humbly apologize.”

“Um. Okay so now you’ve both apologized to me and I’m really not sure what to make of it.” Jeh scratched the back of her head. “Um… it’s okay, you two?”

“You know what…” Jill floated down to be level with Jeh’s face. “You’re right, it is fine. You… are just a kid. I think I forgot that after you went through so much for me and Envila.”

“Hey, I’m the invincible girl, how can I not?”

“…I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Jeh, but I can appreciate you.”

“Aww, thanks!” Jeh held out her arms… and frowned. “…You aren’t very huggable.”

“I would rather avoid the hug, thank you.”

“All right, but only this once!” Jeh clapped her hands together. “Now, how’s about we go find Envila and see if we can figure out our next step?”

“Oh, right, our next step… Um, Jeh, I think…”

“Let’s wait until we find Envia, okay? That way you won’t have to explain it twice!”

“…Yes, but… oh, whatever, you’re right enough.”

“Onward, then!”

Going down the helical spiral was much easier. And a lot more fun. Note to self, bring a sled next time.

~~~

Pepper was a Red Wizard who had two areas of research expertise. The first and admittedly far more scholarly pursuit were studies of heating, cooling, and temperature, specifically with the goal of trying to figure out how to precisely regulate and measure temperature in any direction, including cooling, though naturally she generally had to rely on ice elementals for this. Blue was well aware of this due to information from Vaughan.

Pepper’s other field of study was the one the general public knew about, and the one that got her most of her money—the art of slaying monsters. The bigger the better.

Pepper’s lab served both of these purposes. At once.

Blue had not put two and two together the first time she’d been here.

“You remember Arnold, right?” Pepper asked as they passed a skull that had five eye sockets and three angular maws filled multiple rows of teeth. Each individual socket could easily have fit both Pepper and Blue inside of it.

“How could I forget Arnold…” Blue breathed, trying not to look at the skull. This was difficult, as it was mounted over the main entrance to Pepper’s lab—which, unlike most of the other wizard labs, wasn’t anywhere near the Academy, but was actually outside the main bounds of Axiom, resting on top of a hill next to a watchtower. The structure was designed with function rather than form, for from the outside it was just an ordinary rectangular brick with only a handful of decorations, which were either Magenta crystal lamps, remnants of various monsters Pepper had slain, or Aware religious iconography. Pepper clearly had no sense for aesthetics since everything was thrown around with no sense of balance, color, or any thought in the world. One of the skulls was on top of an instance of Dia’s triangle. Blue knew several Keepers who would throw a fit at that. It even made Blue slightly uneasy.

She found it very odd that Pepper didn’t seem to care, the woman was overtly religious, to the point of it being a little suffocating at times. Or was that just her overenthusiastic personality? Blue couldn’t tell, really, simply keeping up with Pepper was hard enough to do, trying to figure her out was likely to result in a headache.

Blue realized she had started tuning Pepper out so she tuned back in, glad to hear that Pepper was just yammering on about her encounter with Arnold out on the ocean. “…And then thunder struck, KA-BLAM, and down he went! I would have been dead! Just goes to show that even an expert monster hunter like myself gets stuff out of her league from time to time!”

“You know, that story doesn’t exactly make you out as a good monster hunter…”

“Duh, that’s why I tell it the most, manages expectations. Also I like telling stories but maaaaaaan do I have a tendency to brag. And show off. It’s so fuuuuun but kinda wrooooong…” She flicked her halo with a finger, sending some flames into the air. “Anyway, right, I’ve prattled on long enough! You’ve gotta see this!”

Blue was one again dragged despite her insistence that she could walk. They passed through the main doors into the interior of the lab. Most of it was just a single open area, not all that unlike a warehouse, if a space filled with numerous highly-reinforced cages and arcane devices that could create enough heat to melt rock were things one could consider a warehouse. There was no sense of organization. To their left was a crystal globe filled with some kind of green slimy creature with black beady eyes that continually rearranged themselves on the gelatinous surface, leaned up right against a tall arcane device made mostly out of Red rods that went all the way to the ceiling. This device had so many warning labels on it that it wasn’t even funny. One of the labels had fallen off and was lying on the ground, and it had a symbol of a head being torn in half, revealing a second head inside of it. Blue did not want to know what that meant.

Such precarious situations were normal around Pepper’s lab. Great, monstrous beasts imprisoned in increasingly creative cages right next to some heat-related device that was either extremely dangerous, extremely confusing, or labeled “failed cooling device, use for scrap later. If I remember. I probably won’t. Which is what this sign is for!” followed by a crude drawing of Pepper winking.

The scale was a bit hard to take in all at once as well. The lab needed to be huge to hold the larger creatures, such as the boulder-thing with a single red eye that had apparently been found three months ago on the coast rolling over buildings like they were made of paper for no discernible reason. It was kept in place not by a cage, but several large metal screws that affixed it to the ground. Which just made Blue feel like it could move and crush her at any moment.

Then there was the noise. Many of the creatures imprisoned here hooted, howled, and cawed the entire time, most of which translated roughly to “DEATH TO YOU.” This was a place for monsters after all, there wasn’t really much point in studying how to kill more ordinary things.

Pepper eventually dragged Blue to the middle of the lab, where there was a sealed room-sized cube made of glass. There were no doors in it, only a simple receptacle that small objects could be placed in, and a single pedestal in the center of the cube on which nothing was currently resting.

“Behold… my vacuum chamber!”

“Your what?” Blue asked.

“Vacuum. It’s a word I made up to describe an airless place.”

Blue turned to examine the cube. “There’s no air in there?”

“Yep! Want to know how I know?”

“Yes…”

Pepper generated a small flame in front of her finger and demonstrated her ability to generate the flame anywhere in the air she wanted with extreme precision, even tracing out a smiley face really quickly. Then she moved it toward the vacuum chamber and passed it through the glass. There was no flame at all on the other side.

“Now, if there was a small amount of air, I could increase the intensity and still get some fire out of it…” The Red crystals wrapped around the foliage of Pepper’s arm suddenly lit up and stayed lit, indicating that a master wizard was pulling almost as much energy out of them as was possible.

There was nothing in the chamber. Not even a spark.

Blue tapped a hoof. “I do have to ask…”

“Yes, I didn’t burn anything in there ahead of time, if there was any air left it’d be ordinary unburned air.”

“Then… how did you get the air out?”

“Air elementals and a suction tube.”

“Ah. Yeah. That would do it.” Blue frowned. “Having easy access to elementals must make things really easy for you.”

“It makes things easy to test, see, the goal is to find ways to do things without elementals since, well, they’re rare and not too many of them are willing to be anywhere near magic no matter how much you pay them. And unlike some people I don’t intend to force them…”

“Um…”

“Probably not something I should be complaining about, ahem.” She coughed. “So! I did not drag you here just to see the vacuum chamber, no, I’ve been using it for things! And Dia has blessed us with some very good results!” With a twirl, Pepper danced over to a nearby table, knocking off a small cage with some kind of red batlike creature in it. Out from the loose notebooks and boxes, she pulled out a small cylindrical object of solid metal. “This is my test cylinder.” She placed it into the receptacle to the vacuum chamber. After this, she turned a dial that pressed two moldable plates into the cylinder, pushing all air in the receptacle out. Blue wasn’t entirely sure how the mechanism worked, but it did appear to be based somewhat on Vaughan’s airlock design, given the obvious plast seals on the edges.

Satisfied that there was no air in the receptacle anymore simply because there was no place for it to stay, Pepper turned a few more cranks and opened the interior to the vacuum chamber. Turning the original crank backward, the sheets of metal released, allowing the little metal cylinder to fall to the ground in the vacuum chamber.

Blue thought she might have heard the slightest of noises when the cylinder hit the ground, but she couldn’t be sure. Even if there had been a sound, it was far quieter than it should have been.

“Weird, isn’t it?” Pepper asked, using her Orange to levitate the cylinder on top of the pedestal, but she didn’t set it down, she made sure it floated in the air. With a grin, she flared her Red magic once more, almost immediately heating the small metal object until it was white hot. “And now it’s the hottest thing in this warehouse. I think. Anyway…”

“Radiation heat transfer,” Blue said. “Right, I talked about this during the meeting.”

“Yes, and your experiment got me thinking. What other properties can we tease out of heat when there’s no air? There might be some… unexpected things. And it turns out, I was right to follow the hunch, though I did need some help. Hey! Udruz! You can come out now!”

A tall humanoid comparable in height to a gari emerged from behind a cage. He was a Blue wizard with simple robes. Aside from the clothing, however, he was an absolutely featureless figure. Gaunt, thin, one would almost say bony, except everything was too smooth. He had no face, only a black ovoid on which his pointed hat sat. It wasn’t a natural black, either, clearly it was some kind of attribute with how it didn’t reflect any light.

“Greetings…” he spoke with a raspy, hollow voice. There was no indication of a mouth moving to make the words.

Blue folded her ears back and stepped away. “Uh…”

“Oh, don’t worry, he’s not a demon,” Pepper said.

“True, although I cannot tell you what I am,” Udruz said. “The wizards found me.”

Blue blinked, the initial shock of the featureless darkness passing. “Wait, if you don’t know what you are, how do you know you’re no—”

“Because we have a demon locked away in that Magenta cage over there.” Udruz said, gesturing over his shoulder with a pointed finger.

“Really hard to keep that thing contained,” Pepper muttered.

“But it is clearly not me.”

Blue glanced over at the Magenta cage. It was exactly what it sounded like, a cage made almost entirely out of interlocking pieces of Magenta and metal, each part of the Magenta flickering on and off indicating active loops. Clearly some kind of magical scrambler, designed to keep whatever was inside from using magic. But wait, only the spirited can use magic…

“Blue, over here!” Pepper waved. “Let’s not worry about the morbid spawn of darkness right now, we’ve got something to show you! Do your thing Udruz!”

Udruz nodded. “Prepare to insert more will into your levitation.”

“I may not be an Orange wizard, but I can put as much will into basic levitation as I want!”

“Yes. I know. We’ve done this before.”

“But Blue needs context.”

“It will be evident to her what is happening.” Udruz lifted a hand, holding within a large Blue crystal. “Now.”

The floating test cylinder faltered a bit, but it didn’t fall to the pillar and continued floating. A few seconds later the white-hot color vanished, and it returned to normal.

But Udruz and Pepper were still working, their Colored crystals still glowing. They stood like this for several minutes.

“Okay…” Pepper said, starting to frown. The intensity of her halo dimmed slightly. “I think… we might be reaching my limit of keeping it stable…”

“Letting off the acceleration…”

Slowly, the energy in both of their crystals died down. Carefully, Pepper levitated the test cylinder back to the receptacle and sealed it in. She did not bother pressing the plates to it—there was no air to remove. When she opened the receptacle there was a very loud woosh as air rushed in to fill the cavity.

Pepper grinned. “You ready for this?”

Blue had a pretty good idea what was going on, but she didn’t want to ruin the show. “Yes.”

Pepper picked a glass of water off a nearby table. She gingerly dropped the test cylinder in.

Immediately ice crystals started to form on the cylinder.

“That… that’s amazing,” Blue said. “You… you solved the cooling problem!”

“Eh, only in airless environments,” Pepper said. “But otherwise YES WE TOTALLY DID!” She threw her fists into the air. “Rapid acceleration of an object in vacuum will lower its temperature with no known limit! Because we can’t measure temperatures that low at all! No idea how! But it makes it really really cold!”

“And the Moonshot will be in space.” Blue started tapping her hooves giddily. “We just have to accelerate… actually, wait, how will that work? If we accelerate the ship, we throw off the calculations and…”

“You have fallen into the trap of absolute speed,” Udruz interrupted. “If you accelerate an object that is affixed to something, it will not change its motion, merely its perception of time. With proper training, this can be triggered intentionally. It is possible to increase the rate of time without altering speed at all. All you have to do is accelerate your ship without speeding it up.”

Blue blinked. “That sounds… contradictory.”

“It is a flaw of the language. Being under Blue is known as acceleration, and yet it need not actually include any physical acceleration, though that is the default configuration of the spell. You might actually appreciate the mathematics of why it has to be this way, that all speeds are relative, for acceleration to make sense it has to be able to be done in every reference frame.*”

*Poor master wizard Udruz doesn’t know about relativity. The ‘proof’ he is talking about is actually wrong, but it is very similar to what we believed before Einstein came along. Stupid speed of light making everything funky…

“I… well actually I do know about that,” Blue said. “I use it to calculate how the Skyseed and Moonshot will move in space. I just… didn’t think Blue had anything to do with it…” She scratched her chin. “Interesting… if we can use Blue without actually changing our speed…”

“Be careful. If you just encase the entire ship without concern, you will slow down your perception of time.”

“But, hang on, Vaughan did experiments like this… there was a limit to how much an object could cool. Why does acceleration change that?”

“Admittedly we’re not entirely sure,” Pepper admitted. “Radiation heat transfer itself is still largely a mystery. What we do know is that it doesn’t work with other forms of heat transfer, accelerating an object makes it give up its heat faster, but at the end the heat level of two objects are the same even if one is accelerated and one is not… when the primary mode of heat transfer is conduction, anyway.”

“There is some evidence that changes if you tweak the boundary,” Urduz said.

Pepper gave Urduz a cute smile. “What did I say about mentioning the boundary in my presence?”

“It’s an important Blue magic concept…”

“That is waaaay too far into theoretical mumbo-jumbo for my physically minded brain to parse.”

Urduz sighed. “Right, of course. Regardless, yes, it’s something about how the heat is transferred. Physical contact seeks equilibrium. However, equilibrium is not attained for an object in a vacuum undergoing radiative heat transfer while Blue-accelerated. It releases more heat than it absorbs. Which makes some sense, it’s experiencing more time than the surroundings, so it releases heat faster than an object radiating without being accelerated.”

“That just makes it sound like it should work for conduction too,” Blue said. “Heat will leave the accelerated section faster.”

“Ah, but does it, or does it also absorb heat faster? Radiation may be a purely emissive procedure.”

“But…” Blue scrunched her snout. “Wait, do we even know what heat is?”

“Ah, she’s asked the question!” Pepper said with a laugh. “The question whose answer will put your name in the history books for eternity!”

“…We don’t know.”

“No, we don’t! We talk about it all the time, try to measure it, figure out how it goes in and out of things… but we haven’t the foggiest idea what it is! Is it some kind of physical thing? Is it a property things have? Is it an emergent property due to interaction of things? There are theories for all three and we don’t know which is which!” She put a hand on Blue’s shoulder. “Isn’t it exciting!?”

“…You know, kinda, yeah.”

Urduz let out a sigh. “I see you two are of kindred spirits…”

“I’m not this crazy,” Blue said. Then she remembered that she was working on a ship that would launch into space with her in it. “Okay, scratch that. I am crazy. And this…” She pointed at the glass of water that only had a few ice crystals left, most of it had melted once more. “This is the solution to the cooling problem we need. In space, we can just… control our temperature. Blue for cold, Red for heat. …Heh, the colors even match, kinda. What are the chances?”

“The Colors are reflections of the Great Crystalline Ones,” Pepper said. “They carry with them connotations of the original personalities. Red was angry, and fire is angry, and red. Blue was calm and collected, and so are the waters, and water is blue. It’s all connected, deep down, Blue.” She held up a chunk of Blue crystal into the air and let it glint off one of the lights in her lab, smiling. “People ask me sometimes why I’m so devoted to Dia. It’s little things like this, little touches in how the world works that speak of purpose. Red is warm. And Blue… is cold.”

Blue tilted her head to the side. “Eh?”

Pepper shrugged. “Or maybe I’m just nuts, that’s possible, everyone sure thinks so. Anyway… was this trip worth it?”

“…Yes.”

“Want to play with the vacuum chamber?”

Blue’s eyes widened. “Yes.”

“Great! I’m going to get something blue-hot!”

“I thought we just said blue was cold!”

“The temperature I’m raising this thing to isn’t natural!”

~~~

Envila stood to her full height. With a deep breath, she removed her cloak.

The metallic ground in front of her was polished to a sheen, allowing her to easily see herself. At long last, she could finally say she no longer looked sickly. There was flesh on her bones once more, her face was full, and her stomach wasn’t forming a cavity in her midriff. However, her muscles—those were almost completely gone. Her arms were thin and graceful, and there were no sign of the abs she had worked tirelessly to develop and maintain.

She was a fae. This was what they were supposed to look like. Thin. Graceful. Delicate. Fragile.

This was not what she was supposed to look like.

She was not vain. She did not care about her appearance, or how she appeared to others. But she did care about being able to take care of herself. Now that she was no longer on death’s door, the state of her body was completely unacceptable.

She was going to fix it.

Taking in a sharp breath, she held out her weapon, an arcane device from a distant land that naturally took the form of a rod. With a flick of her wrist, some Orange sparks went flying and the rod popped out into a warhammer. It was heavy.

Start small, Envila told herself. You remember how hard it was to do this at the start, you can’t rush into it.

She didn’t channel any will or any magic into it. All she did was swing it forward and bring it to a stop in a stretching motion. Even this simple thing made her limbs burn and her shoulders ache. It was a feeling she remembered, albeit distantly.

She had gone through such pain before. She could do it again.

Unlike many who had been in a situation similar to her own, Envila could identify the desperation in her own thoughts, and how dangerous such a desperation was. She was weak, vulnerable, and prone to making mistakes—and rash decisions. She’d originally intended to do this body training outside of We’ir City so no one could see her and tell her to take it easy for her recovery, but could she really trust herself not to overdo it? The eyes of others on her could keep her safe. Keep her honest.

Oh, how hard it was to be honest with oneself when one was not what one wanted to be…

She supposed there was at least something to thank the inner turmoil in her mind for. It was making it easier to ignore the burning sensation in her arms. So long as she kept control of her motions and didn’t break anything, her thoughts would occupy her focus, and she could keep going. Getting stronger. Was such a thing healthy? She didn’t know, but she was the sort to spend half an hour trying to think and feel her way through it to find out, even if it didn’t look like there would be a clear solution.

“Envila!” Jeh called.

Envila gave Jeh a smile but continued doing her exercises with her hammer. “Ah… Jeh! Glad to see you… doing better…” She was speaking in Karli. Jeh at this point could formulate most thoughts in Desc, but Envila needed to practice. She would eventually journey into Kroan and need to know the language herself, relying on Jeh would not be acceptable, especially when she returned to that Program of hers. “Jill, you?”

“I am doubting…” Jill used so many big words that Envila couldn’t keep up with the context, but she got the impression Jill was being sarcastic and dismissive of internal turmoil. Envila wished she could share her experience with such things, but she did not know any of the languages Jill knew with enough clarity to actually convey the complex thoughts. Trying to relay through Jeh would also likely be an exercise in futility, for as clever as the girl was, she was rather oblivious to many things.

Jeh still thought Envila didn’t know where the food had come from, despite having obviously healed from impossible wounds right in front of Envila and not even tried to hide it. That said, it was probably best that Jeh believed she didn’t know, Envila was fairly sure any confrontation would not only be rather unpleasant but also lack any real benefit.

Jill was still going on.

“Um… you lost me,” Envila said, switching to some leg exercises. Oooh, that muscle hasn’t been used in weeks… aaaaaaggghhh…

Jill beeped, proceeding to say a sentence that was easier to understand, but still not great. “I don’t even know what I was saying something. Um. Short something. Jeh and I don’t understand something. This is fine.”

“You sure?” Envila asked.

“Yes, actually.”

“Okay.” Inwardly, Envila felt like chuckling, though she stifled the response since it would be rude. Things had a way of testing her patience even after all this time. It showed she still had more to grow. “Glad for you!”

“Thanks.”

Jeh coughed, switching into Desc. “So, Envila, we’re trying to figure out what our next step is. Jill’s better, you’re better, and I still need to get back to Kroan.” The girl was far from fluent in the language and had a lot of awkward pauses in her speech, but the rate at which she’d come to the words was nothing short of miraculous. Apparently it had been even faster than learning Karli for her by a lot.

“You did not have to stay with us, and yet you did,” Envila said. “Your obligation has long passed, and we greatly appreciate you. If you wish to hurry—ah, but that is not the full reason, you do not wish to travel alone.”

Jeh shuffled her feet. “Yeah… even though you two were… uh… pretty heavy, it was…” Jeh snapped her fingers, switching back into Karli. “It was not something-something.”

Envila couldn’t help the chuckle this time, but she purposefully responded in Karli. “I not understand, but I see. You. Your… spirit… nature. Not literally.” She stopped her exercise and caressed Jeh’s chin. “I will come. Even if weak, I will come. Irony: you protect me, not I protect you.”

Jeh chuckled. “I don’t need protecting.”

“Your body, no. Your mind and soul? Yes.” Envila turned to Jill. “You… feel no need.”

Jill blinked, clearly startled. Envila quickly frowned. “ I mean… you… do not… need to feel…” She reached her hand into the air, trying to pull out the word.

“Obligated?” Jill offered.

“Yes. You do not need to feel obligated. I think.” Envila smiled warmly. “You… have your own.”

Jeh frowned. “Eh? I don’t… why wouldn’t she come?”

“Something trying to tell you something,” Jill said, turning to Jeh. “I… will be staying here.”

Jeh blinked, clearly looking sad, and then quickly trying to make it look like she wasn’t sad and… succeeding more than most children would have, but not by much. “O-oh. Um. Why?”

Envila did not understand the story Jill told at first, but she would later. Jill had come from the Western side of the Shinelands when she was young, traveling over it just because she was reckless and wanted to prove to her family that she could. The journey across made it clear to her that she would not be returning back, and so she lived on the Eastern side alone until Jeh came along. And now that she was back… she wanted to find her people. But she was unable to do that, so the Ch’eni’tho were going to take care of her until they found word of where they were. A nomadic people that always kept near to the border… a search that would keep Jeh far from Kroan were she to help with it.

“But…” Jeh was clearly torn after Jill finished. “I can…”

“You can. You shouldn’t,” Jill said. “You have family waiting for you. You know where they are.”

Jeh looked down at the ground and nodded.

“You will not be alone,” Jill said, looking to Envila. “And I… not something for this.”

Jeh nodded slowly. Then, without warning, she jumped up and pulled Jill into a hug.

Envila remained silent, not even doing any exercises while the two had their moment. Even though Envila had not caught all the words, the emotions of the two were laid out to her like a book—even that of the Watchlight. Expressionless though she might have been, that voice of hers told Envila everything she needed to know about the pain, the inner conflict, the uncertainty… though even these were just the outer layers of the much deeper bundle that made up the person of Jill. And, in a sense, Jeh as well.

So naturally Envila was a little miffed when a Ch’eni’tho decided to tactlessly interrupt the moment.

“You three seem ready,” a Ch’eni’tho with red markings on his limbs said in Karli.

“Ready for what?” Envila asked.

“To listen. To hear. To understand. Come.” He gestured for them to follow. Envila got the impression that it wasn’t a request, but she sensed no hostility. The three of them followed without any argument, coming to a metal helix that sloped down into the ground. They descended, soon the only source of light being the crackling lightning on the Ch’eni’tho they were following.

Envila didn’t even know his name. She suspected he wasn’t going to give it.

The Ch’eni’tho started speaking in more complex sentences, pausing to give Jeh enough time to convey anything Envila missed to her—despite the rigid speaking with simple words, some of the concepts were still beyond Envila’s grasp of the language, but communication was established.

“We gave you time to recover,” the Ch’eni’tho told them. “The medical recommendation was to leave you unknowing so you could recuperate in peace. But now that you are preparing to go, you must know.”

Once she had this fully relayed to her, Envila frowned. “If we didn’t get to know then, why now?”

“So you can carry a message.”

Envila was intrigued, to say the least, but no further information was given until they reached the bottom, which was a single spherical enclosure with a single balcony for the visitors to stand on. The space itself was roughly the size of a large tree, and on the walls five Ch’eni’tho were chained up to give their limbs very limited movement.

The moment the visitors entered the Ch’eni’tho started struggling with uncharacteristic rage against their chains, lashing, trying to get out, to do anything, but the chains did not give way. All along, the Ch’eni’tho spoke with their signature monotone voice, repeating the same words over and over again in their language… Envila was working on Kroan and had not been bothering to learn the Ch’eni’tho tongue.

But Jill understood.

“They’re… they’re just saying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over and over again…”

“They have no control of their bodies,” their guide said, tapping a leg on the ground. “They returned from expeditions into the Shinelands like this. Fully themselves in mind, but not in body.”

As Jeh relayed this to Envila, Envila noticed that Jeh was more curious and sad than terrified as most people would rightfully be in a room of mindless murderous rigids. “Eastern Ch’eni’tho?” Envila asked.

Jeh shook her head. “They weren’t like this…”

“We believe the same problem is afflicting them as well,” the Ch’eni’tho explained. “But as it originated in the center of the Shinelands, we have been cut off from our wayward brethren. You are the first to bring news of them since the emergence of this. Tell me, have you witnessed any rigids who apologize for actions they take?”

Jeh and Jill had not. But once Envila understood what was being asked, she nodded. “There was a… three leg rigid. Attacked me. Destroyed my food. Tried to warn me.” She frowned. “I destroyed him.”

“You very likely had to,” their guide said. “Those under this malady are often violent. But it is not pure madness. They can coordinate, act in large organized groups. They have been raiding rigid settlements. News is hard to come by, but we believe they are increasing their number this way.”

“…All of that was out there and we just missed it!?” Jill shouted.

“Indeed. You are quite fortunate. Lucky. Alternate explanation: you were let through.”

Everyone was silent at that. Jeh even forgot to relay it to Envila for a few seconds. After she was done, Jeh shook her head. “Why would they let us through…?”

“You are hardly normal, Jeh. Perhaps it fears you.”

Jeh tilted her head. “Eeeeeeh…”

“Regardless, you have gotten through, and we can make use of this. Ch’eni’tho cannot leave the Shinelands, our diet requires this ecosystem, to go beyond for long without supplies means death, and so evacuation is not possible. We will defend our city when they come, for we are sure they will, but they are such an unknown that we are uncertain.” He allowed Jeh to relay the ideas before continuing. “We need you to take a message to Kroan and Shimvale to warn them of this growing threat of rigid madness. And to request aid. The Wild Kingdoms do not have the power to assist us, and the messengers we have hired out of desperation from them have given no indication of making it to their destination. Whether due to infighting among the Kingdoms, wild animals, bad luck… or intentional sabotage, we cannot say. You have a much greater chance of success, being literally unkillable.”

Jeh rubbed the back of her head. “Geez… uh, sure I’ll help, but I can’t promise anything. I… think I’m kind of supposed to be hiding from my government?”

“We do not ask that you reveal what you are, though you are absolutely terrible at hiding it if you really do need to be.”

“…Yeeeeah, really need to work on that… but sure, I’ll bring a message. I’m pretty sure they’ll want a lot of information and details tho—”

The Ch’eni’tho dropped a rather thick book into Jeh’s arms. She almost dropped it. “That contains all the data we have on the condition and its spread. Written in Karli.” He dropped an identical copy on top of the first one. “Have a backup just in case.”

“Th-thorough…” Jeh muttered.

The Ch’eni’tho turned to Envila. “You want to go with her. She will be in no danger. You will be.”

“I need to go that way,” Envila said with a smile. “I’m trying to circle the… sphere?”

“Globe.”

“Yes, circle the globe.” I have to leave sometime, might as well do something worthwhile. This certainly qualifies.

The Ch’eni’tho turned to Jill. “You are not like Ch’eni’tho, you can survive on the sun and rocks. It may not be safe here. We are still looking for your people, for they are in danger too.”

“…I will stay, still,” Jill said. “I… they’ll be in the midst of this. Not out there.”

The Ch’eni’tho nodded. “I understand that you may wish to rest longer, but we would encourage you to hurry. Diplomacy is slow.”

“I’ll… go as…” Jeh looked up to Envila.

“We will leave right away,” Envila said, nodding.

“But Envila…”

“I can move. Time is limited.”

“…Okay.” Jeh clenched her jaw and steeled her face. “We won’t let you down mister crab man!”

The Ch’eni’tho tapped his leg. “I hope not. We cannot practice eternity well without our bodies.”

Envila shuddered inadvertently. She had seen many terrible things on her journeys. But a plague that took the body and not the mind, forcing those afflicted to commit atrocities in the name of an unknown will?

This might have been the worst yet. Just when she’d thought she’d seen it all, the world threw her something even more disturbing.

The fact that she might now be a target was of little concern to her, she was far more concerned about the kinds of rigids she might have to fight. What she would have to do to them. Like that poor tripod who assaulted her… and almost left her to starve.

This was not a problem that could be solved by punching it hard enough or talking it out… she wasn’t even sure exactly what Kroan or Shimvale could do.

But the Ch’eni’tho were asking for help. It was clearly desperate, so it had to be tried.

And so they left. Envila and Jeh stocked up on supplies, giving most of it to Jeh to carry seeing as Envila was definitely not back to top shape yet. All they had to do… was cross the wilderness of the Wild Kingdoms and reach the civilized nations with a message.

But they had limited information, limited maps, and there was no infrastructure to back them up past this point. All they could do… was walk.

Jeh looked behind them at Jill and the city of the Ch’eni’tho. “…Don’t go losing control of that new body of yours, we worked so hard to get it.”

“I’ll try my best.” Jill whirled her wheel around. “I am sorry we will not see more of each other, Jeh.”

“Not see more? Jill, I—”

“You have a Space Program to get back to once you complete your message,” Jill said. “This… is goodbye.”

Jeh suddenly teared up, something Envila had not seen in her face before. “B-but…”

“Jeh… you can’t be everywhere. And they matter more to you than I do.”

Jeh clearly didn’t want to admit it, but she nodded anyway. She wiped her eyes.

“Thank you, Jeh.”

Jeh put on her usual cocky smile, though the effect was marred by her red face. “Y-you’re welcome!”

“I’ll be sure to listen for news of the girl that went to the moon.”

With that, Jeh awkwardly embraced Jill one last time… and they were off. Thoughts swirled through Envila’s head, and no doubt just as many swam through Jeh’s.

But neither of them noticed the black speck that darted across the sky…

~~~

Blue sat at the desk provided for her to do her work. She had used it a lot the first few days to clean up confusions about the Skyseed and potential changes to improve it, but lately it had not seen much use. That is, except for today. Today, she had several books on the mathematical theory of Blue Magic and was scribbling down pages upon pages upon pages of numbers, trying to work out exactly how it all worked.

It was, to put it mildly, extremely difficult. Heat, while clearly a quantity of somekind, was not easily measured aside from comparisons with other objects, or the light really hot objects gave off. There were primitive mathematical relations to describe overall flows of heat, but they were of comparable complexity and annoyance to the things she’d needed to do to calculate orbits. But, at least, these mathematical systems had been well-studied and she didn’t have to work from scratch.

Unfortunately, what she was trying to do was figure out exactly how the boundary of Blue interfered with heat transfer. Which was not a well-studied problem.

She was beginning to think she simply didn’t have the tools required to actually model it… there were clear patterns in the data she’d acquired from Pepper’s lab, but no answers.

Not for the first time that day she asked herself why she was doing it. Her calculations and analysis of the data had already confirmed that it worked. In an airless environment cooling could go seemingly forever so long as a wizard’s will was kept active, with diminishing returns the colder one got. In fact, it would be even better in space since the radiation heat transfer from the cage wouldn’t be present. There was only the object itself in the midst of nothing, warmed by the sun and…

“…Wait a hoofin’ minute,” Blue said, suddenly sitting up. Warm things radiated heat. Human bodies were warm. Jeh was… well close enough to a human body. She was releasing heat into the container of the Skyseed. That container would radiate some of the heat out into space, but the other half of it would radiate back into the container.

Blue immediately started scribbling this down. This was definitely not what she had been looking for, but unlike the hopeless math this looked like it would actually lead somewhere. The hollow object released more heat inside than outside, and things that moved like living things generated heat of their own… well, warm-blooded things, anyway. Perhaps reptilian spirited would make good space pilots? She jotted that down as a quick note, quickly returning to the hasty drawing she’d made of the Skyseed with Jeh in it.

“That’s it. That’s the explanation,” she said, grinning. “She’s making more heat than it releases, increasing the temperature! Hah! I figured it out!” She slammed a hoof onto the desk, looking out a window… and noticing that her hoof felt warm. It was in the sunbeam.

The gears started turning in her head. She drew a quick circle to represent Ikyu and then drew a wavy line to represent the atmosphere around it. An arrow of “heat” came from the sun and hit the atmosphere. Two arrows erupted from this point, each half size, one going out and one going in to Ikyu. Air can be hot too, after all… She drew more and more arrows, visually constructing a cascade effect. She then realized that the arrows that went out from places lower in the atmosphere would hit something and then be able to be radiated in multiple directions again and…

“This is how the Sun warms Ikyu…” Blue breathed. “We… we always knew it warmed us, but, light is just warm itself, it… waiiiit…” She squinted her eyes out the window and looked at the sun. “Is heat… light? Crystals glow when used, but they don’t warm us up or light things up… but Purple can alternatively be used as a heater…” She sat up and started tapping her four hooves excitedly. “Ooooh the possibilities, I can’t wait to tell Vaughan and Krays about this!”

It was at this point she heard a bloodcurdling scream in the room behind her. She immediately dropped what she was working on and rushed out. “What’s going on!?”

The scene before her was hard to take in. There was a big blue slime in the room, carrying… her? (Blue really couldn’t tell) badge within her gooey interior, marking her as a member of the Royal Guard. At her side was a junior guard, a young neko woman, who had passed out on the floor from shock. Shock at a sight that almost made Blue follow suit, but she managed to hold it in and do nothing more than gasp in horror.

It was Tilenii Kroan.

She was flattened. Her chest had been crushed like a pancake and blood was spread all over the floor—much of which had dried, indicating that this had happened quite some time ago, but not long enough that it was completely dry. Her head was completely untouched, eyes open wide in shock and terror, frozen in her final moments.

“…Miss,” the slime said, drawing Blue’s attention. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you why you haven’t reported the body.”

Blue blinked and stammered. “I-I, w-well, I was… working… in the room back there… I… didn’t hear anything…”

“…I’m going to have to take you in for questioning.”

“Wh—hey! I didn’t do this!” Blue protested. “I…”

“Miss, if you make a scene, it will just get worse for you.”

Blue’s mind was reeling. The slime was right, of course, she needed to cooperate, but there was a nagging thought she couldn’t get rid of. The King had told her she’d made enemies. Pepper had indicated that she was literally protecting Blue in some cases. What if this… was all some ploy?

…For all she knew, though, the ploy expected her to run away and cause a scene. She didn’t know enough. Plus, the murders had been going on since before she arrived and… suddenly she wished she’d paid more attention to the Princesses when they’d talked about it, or gotten informed about it, or something.

But she didn’t know anything.

All she could do was fall in line.

It wasn’t until she was halfway to the guardhouse that she realized she hadn’t felt a hint of remorse at seeing the woman dead on the ground.

This realization horrified her much more than anything else.

~~~

A neko shot a poisoned arrow into Jeh’s head. She quickly pulled it out but found that her perceptions started to swim and everything became slightly blue. Apparently her regeneration didn’t filter that out… it was kind of fun, actually. She might even have enjoyed it if she weren’t currently trying to run away without tripping over any roots. Which she failed, miserably.

Envila wasted no time picking her up and running deeper into the jungles.

“Envila… no… I’m supposed to…”

“Shush, you clearly can’t,” Envila said, though Jeh could already tell her breathing was getting haggard. That said, her legs were much larger than a neko’s, and the isolated people weren’t all too thrilled about the idea of hunting down a towering ethereal monster with a giant Crystal hammer. They were not pursued for very long.

Envila collapsed at the trunk of a giant mushroom, slamming her hands into the ground and grabbing hold of the vine-like plants that covered the ground in this area of the world. She took in several huge, hyperventilating breaths.

Jeh, meanwhile, flopped onto her back and stared at the sky. “Ergremeblegheff…”

“Your power has limits.”

“Blue is fun,” Jeh muttered, but she was already finding the color returning to her sight. Not that her head felt any less muddled. It felt like… like a cat… maybe she was a cat… if she wasn’t, being a cat would be nice… wait, did humans like ear scritches? Did she like ear scritches? She scratched herself behind the ear, horribly disappointed by the result.

She discovered that she had another arrow in her arm. This one either wasn’t poisoned or just didn’t have the same effect since it wasn’t shot directly into her brain. She ripped it out and glared at it. “Annoying.”

“This… is what we expected,” Envila said, slowly getting her breathing under control. “The Wild Kingdoms…”

“People afraid of other people.” Jeh shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t have much fear.”

Jeh frowned. “Still, people are people.”

“Or are they monsters?”

“We don’t look like monsters.”

“We look different. That is enough. To them, to be spirited… is to be neko.”

“You think they’d be happy to find other spirited. I was…” the original effect on Jeh’s brain was almost gone and she just felt kind of mopey now. “Hearing those words from Blue for the first time…”

“Some monsters can use words,” Envila said, frowning. “They have no meaning… except to get food.”

Jeh sat up. “Really?”

“Yes. There is a… snake? A snake, that mimics the screams of those it has eaten. Words and all. To draw in the kind-hearted.”

Jeh’s eyes widened not in fear but in utter fascination. “Tell me more…”

“I think your brain needs a… reset.”

“Oh. Okay.” She bonked herself in the head with her fist. “…Wait…” She shook her head, looking back down at the arrow. “It’ll be hard, going like this.”

“Well, unless we find someone strangely trusting or a Sanctuary, we’re probably alone until we get closer to Kroan.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Immediately, Envila was alert—she’d been so exhausted she’d let her senses falter. She hadn’t even noticed the gari approach. She was short for a gari, but not young, and her hair was black. Black gari were extremely rare, even rarer than albinos who were just born without pigment. She was wearing a long-sleeve black dress with holes for her gauntlet spikes to poke through, though it was hard to tell where the garment ended and the plast began seeing as both were the same color. She wore dark hexagonal earrings and had a soft smile paired with sad eyes that one could stare into for an eternity.

“I am no enemy,” the gari said. “I am Margaret Rutherford.”

Envila stood up, trying her best to look strong and threatening. “You… speak Kroan?”

“It is best to speak many languages in a land many weary travelers pass through. Travelers that need aid. Travelers that will not trust waving hands and shouts as anything other than more savages.”

Jeh turned to Envila to check if she got that. Envila gave her a slight nod that meant she had, so Jeh turned to Margaret. “So… you’re not here to attack us, rob us, or run us away?”

“No. In fact, the lord of the house considers himself a service to weary travelers. There may be no roads in this jungle, but there are twists and turns among the trees, and we offer the closest thing we know of to an inn for all.”

“The lord of the house?” Jeh asked.

“A man by the name of Jeremiah Rutherford.” Her smile warmed as she spoke his name. “He is the kindest man I have ever known.”

“Your father?” Envila asked.

“Not by blood, but by choice.” Margaret’s sad eyes returned. “You do not have to come, but we do so enjoy the company, and we can give you the rest you need. No matter how much of a hurry you are in, we can offer you respite.”

Envila turned to Jeh. “…Respite?”

“Rest. Calm. A moment of nothing.” Jeh shrugged.

“Ah, she is new to Karli,” Margaret said. “Is there a language you would prefer?”

“Ever hear of Desc?” Envila asked in Desc.

Margaret blinked a few times. “I’m afraid I’ve never heard anything even remotely like that, I am sorry.”

Jeh shrugged. “She knows more languages, but those are the only two I know, so…”

“How curious your story must be, a fae and a human girl…”

Envila’s eyes widened. “You know of fae?”

“Yes, there is a tribe of them not too far from here, though… if you wish to hear of them, I would ask that you join us for lunch, at least.”

“Food…” Jeh said, eyes sparkling. “Actual, delicious, freshly-cooked food that isn’t made by a bunch of metal crabs…”

Envila nodded slowly. “I am a plast.”

“We are aware of fae dietary requirements,” Margaret assured her.

Envila finally let her guard down. “You seem fine to me. Apologies for distrusting your kindness, such acts should not be shunned, and would not in a better world.”

“Eloquently spoken for someone new to Karli.”

Jeh was pretty sure Envila didn’t know what ‘eloquently’ meant, but that did not stop her from continuing, challenging herself to talk further. “I do try my best.” Jeh couldn’t help but admire the tenacity and determination in the fae… but also how calm and collected she was, even in tense situations.

With the initial meeting out of the way, they followed Margaret through the jungle. It did not take long for them to arrive at a jarring transition from unkempt wilderness to extremely well-kept estate. There was green grass and shrubberies arranged in a wide circle surrounding a building that was a bit too small to be a proper mansion, but was large nonetheless. Most of it was made out of massive logs with a single tower of stone toward the left of the structure. Beautiful gardens of tropical mushrooms and flowers dominated the scenery, almost making the building itself seem unimportant despite its central location.

“Woooow…” Jeh said, looking around in wonder. “How did you…”

“We are quite blessed,” Margaret said. “Though the exact specifics should be told you by our lord.”

It was at this point Jeh noticed the symbol hanging over the front doors of the house. A pitch black hexagon with six yellow dots spread around it almost like eyes.

Immediately Envila went on the defensive again. “You… that is the symbol of Eyda.”

Jeh’s eyes went wide. She remembered reading about the followers of Eyda in her books, the Gonal. The goddess of darkness…

Margaret turned to look at them with sad eyes. “…I do so wish She had a different reputation…” Jeh could see contempt in those eyes. “Perhaps we can change your mind…”

~~~

SCIENCE SEGMENT

We’ve already talked about what heat is and radiation heat transfer. However, there is some nuance here in the physical system Pepper is working with in the vacuum, so let’s delve into it a little bit. Naturally, this physical system is somewhat unrealistic since you can’t just accelerate time for an object without immense gravitational fields or relative velocities, but we can work out what it would do just fine.

Take a hollow sphere sitting in the atmosphere at room temperature. This sphere is, itself, room temperature, but has no air inside. In the center there is a really hot object. Now, the object will obviously be so hot it glows, releasing a lot of heat through radiation. This heat is released and hits the sphere surrounding it. The sphere itself is also radiating heat, but it is radiating it into the interior and the exterior. Some heat escapes into the atmosphere, and some heat is returned to the object in the center.

Eventually, let this sit long enough, and the system will reach equilibrium. The sphere will be room temperature, radiating exactly as much heat to the center object as it is releasing. This is why, under normal circumstances, leaving an object in a vacuum chamber doesn’t cool it indefinitely, the chamber itself will transfer heat back to the object at a certain rate as well. Keep in mind that this transfer is very slow, but it works.

In space, though, there would be no back-transfer from the container. The hot object would radiate heat forever. (This is not strictly true, the universe is permeated by the Cosmic MIcrowave Background radiation, which sits around a nice chilly 3 Kelvin.) However, due to how slow this radiation is, even something a simple as a mammal will produce more heat than it can release, effectively cooking itself over time. Though most things just die in space long before this becomes a problem, but if it’s in a ship that keeps it alive, suddenly the ship has issues.

This we probably already know. The trick comes when you ask “well what happens if we speed up time for the object?” When the object is in space, this is simple: it appears to cool off much faster for it radiates heat away quicker. However, what happens when you consider the container? That is, the vacuum chamber itself? Well, the container seeks to go to room temperature, for that’s the temperature of the air outside. It will always release some of the heat out into the air, and some of it in. An accelerated object inside will be emitting more radiation per second than it should, and this radiation will make the container hotter. But that heat will escape, and the heat that is sent back will not be enough to keep the system in equilibrium: the central object will emit more heat than it receives! Granted, there will eventually be a limit reached for a certain factor of time acceleration that is balanced by incoming heat, but if you accelerate something fast enough that’ll be quite a ways down…

This does lead to an interesting question. What if we applied this thought experiment to a different kind of heat transfer? Conduction? There’s no longer radiation involved, just two blocks next to each other. Let’s have them be at the same temperature. Conduction is transferred through molecules hitting one another. When time for one block is accelerated, the molecules will appear to move faster. Which implies that, at the boundary, really fast molecules should hit slower ones and raise the overall heat of the object. Acceleration equals heat, this would imply.

One may note that in the chapter this is explicitly stated as not happening, that in conduction accelerating one part of something does not heat the entire object up except by friction forces due to moving. Now, even though this acceleration is clearly magic, from our little thought experiment we can see that whatever Blue does is clearly treated differently for light (radiation) as opposed to other particles. The secret must lie in the boundary…

This is an example of an unrealistic thought experiment, but it demonstrates how we can think through things scientifically. There are rules to how things work, and so long as everything’s consistent, even the deeply unrealistic physics of magic can be reasoned through. Something’s unusual in the way Blue accelerates things to distinguish between radiation and conduction. I wonder if it can be reasoned out what exactly is going on?