u/DontImplantThechip
▲ 1 r/redditserials
The geometry clown hadn't stopped.
Crow sat on the hot springs bench with his arms resting on his knees, steam curling past his face, and listened to the low, disjointed snickering still drifting through the cedar walls from whichever dark corner the thing had wedged itself into.
"...geometry... hehe... geometry..."
He'd stopped trying to locate the source. He'd stopped caring about the source too. At some point during the last 11 minutes, the sound had simply become part of the room, like the hiss of water on hot stones or the distant creak of the palace settling against itself.
Crow stood, draped the towel across his shoulder, and pushed through the hot springs backdoor that led to the change room.
Cool air met him in the corridor—the ordinary temperature of a hallway that hadn't been filled with steam. He moved through the change room, dressed without ceremony, and left the geometry enthusiast to its private geometric theories.
The kitchen found him the same way it always did: smell first, sound second. Something sizzled somewhere inside. He settled onto a stool at the central block.
Sophia was already there, her back to him, managing three things at once with finesse. She set a plate down in front of him before he asked, bread, something cured, an egg that had stopped being fully warm but hadn't committed to being cold. A cup followed. Black. Still too hot.
She didn't speak. Neither did he. He worked through the plate methodically, the way a man eats when he needs fuel fast, and let the silence hold.
Normally she’ll say something, but I understand. After what happened with her and Alice, I’d be shy too if I were in her place. Yeah, I can see the tips of her ears turning red... never mind. Better leave her alone.
When the cup was empty, he stood, rolled his shoulder once, and left.
***
The corridor outside his quarters felt longer at this hour, or maybe just quieter. He pushed the door open.
Black and gold velvet covered the walls. Across the room, a raven sat perched on the balcony—black marble, or obsidian; only the architects must know. It stared at him for a few brief seconds before spreading its wings and vanishing into the night. Crow saw it, but simply looked away, dismissing it as just another common bird of the estate. The enormous bed dominated the center, its scarlet silk sheets folded perfectly, and undisturbed. The fireplace in the corner still held enough embers to cut the chill.
Crow dropped into the chair near the hearth, elbows on knees, and stared at nothing for a moment.
Then he raised his right hand and looked at the ring.
"Don't look at me like that." The Sage's voice surfaced with the cautious energy of a man who had learned, recently, that silence was expensive. "I know that look. It's the 'I need information and you're going to provide it' look."
“Status.”
A pause. The ring pulsed once.
"Fine, fine. No need to get dramatic."
The window opened.
***
Status
Name: Crow (former name error) Soul Level 12
Title: The Spared One / Heavy Hand
Class: Soul Devourer / Grim Reaper
Situation: Pensive and Rested
STR 50
DEX 34
CON 59
INT 22
WIS 27
***
Learned Skills:
Hand to Hand Combat level 6 (+1)
Swordsmanship level 1
Persuasion level 3 (+1)
Grim Reaper Manifestation level 1 (new)
One-liner level 1 (new)
***
Passive Skills:
Quick Reflex – Your body reacts faster than your mind. Dodging strikes has become instinctive, though it doesn't guarantee good efficiency against all foes.
Enduring Soul – Your spirit refuses to break, allowing you to resist despair and pain, can continue fighting at low HP without losing consciousness. Physical wounds still hurt, but giving up was never an option for you.
Soul Devourer – Consume the essence of defeated enemies to restore a fragment of your own life force. The hunger is insatiable, and every bite carries a faint whisper of the fallen with the memories of them.
Frail Existence – Your existence is weak, you are not a full Grim Reaper. You cannot sustain your full power in the physical world, most skills are locked. Requires more Souls to stabilize.
Questionable Charm – You are seducing too many girls, through questionable means, for some reason luck is on your side in this matter. How did you even obtain this skill???
Smooth Talker – Congratulations, you’ve reached a level of audacity where common sense no longer applies. You can provoke, charm, or confuse anyone with a few syllables. Most people use blades to fight, but you can just use your mouth. How... efficient? (New)
Grim Reaper's Aura – A faint aura of death emanates from you, slightly unsettling nearby foes.
??? - */*+-/*-/2/32*-1*-/ 2/-*/123-*/
ERROR!
The user has a bugged passive skill. Its information cannot be accessed, because one does not naturally exist in this world.
Heavy Hand – Your hand is heavy. Whether you're swinging a sword or just trying to give a 'friendly' pat on the back, things tend to break. You should probably stop touching things. Or people. (New)
***
Crow read it, closed the status windows, and leaned back against the chair with a heavy sigh.
"Serious? 'One-liner'? Why do I have yet another skill based in talking?" Crow asked. "And how did I get this?"
"Well, it is exactly as written there," the Wise Sage said. "These are skills you have acquired, it’s not a magic system; you only have here what you can already use or have learned yourself. The first time is always difficult, but from the second time onward you already know it, that is why it's level 1. Mastery comes later. It is quite simple, really: your tongue has become so sharp lately that you can now taunt others with just a few syllables. Congratulations!"
“Right... now be quiet, I need to think.”
“Ok, ok,” the Wise Sage responded quietly.
The fire cracked once, throwing a brief orange bloom across the ceiling.
She wants to use that golem as a bomb. And the Hero walks into whatever we point him at because that's what Heroes do. Dutiful. Relentless. Designed to finish the story regardless of the cost.
He exhaled through his nose.
The story finishes with him either dead or winning. Those are the only two outcomes built into this world's logic. If it ends with him dead... the rest follows. The party falls apart. The fronts against this kingdom and the monsters are going to collapse. The world ends. Lily—
He stopped that thought where it stood.
She's alive. She has to be. Tomorrow, I will discover the truth.
The fire settled.
So I have one job on this expedition: make sure the Hero survives the bomb, along with his party. Whatever that requires. Alice thinks she's sending a small gift to make the Hero take some time off. But what she's actually doing is threatening to end the world faster.
The corner of his mouth moved.
But I have a plan... If that works, I change the outcome. Maybe not the whole story. Maybe just 1 page. But 1 page is enough to start.
He pressed both hands against his face, dragged them down slowly, and stared at the ceiling.
I can’t wait to retire from this military life, or should I say, forced conscription. I just want to find a farm and start chilling.
He didn't believe that was possible. But thinking about it helped. He moved to the bed and after some minutes he fell asleep.
***
Next morning...
“Geometry…”
Crow bolted upright in bed.
Nothing, absolute silence.
"Ah, it was only a dream... seriously," he muttered.
The knock came exactly when he expected it wouldn't.
Crow opened the door.
Sophia stood in the corridor in full maid uniform, posture impeccable, silver tray balanced across both forearms with the practiced ease of a professional. On the tray: a sealed envelope bearing the royal insignia, and, inexplicably, a small arrangement of dark flowers he couldn't identify.
"Her Majesty requests your presence in the Royal Banquet Hall," Sophia said, with a note of formality that lasted approximately one second before her eyes found his throat and stayed there. Then she began to drool.
Give me a break.
Crow snatched the envelope without opening it. "The flowers are a bit much."
Her head snapped back up. "They say you need to give them while they’re alive... and... just kidding!"
"Very funny Sophia… very funny. You can carry them yourself."
"I carry many things personally." She blinked, daub of drool appearing at the corner of her mouth. She caught it with the edge of her sleeve before it reached the tray. "Shall we?"
He gestured for her to lead. “Lead the way.”
She did, gliding ahead with those soundless steps that still unsettled him almost every single time, her heels making no contact, as if the floor were unwilling to report her presence. Crow followed her through the upper corridor, down the broad stair, past the gallery of unsmiling portraits and the double archway draped in dark brocade, until the smell of food reached him—real food, warm and properly prepared, not the functional fare of the kitchen at odd hours.
The Royal Banquet Hall opened ahead.
***
Long table. High ceilings. Candles burning in iron brackets at measured intervals, their light catching the edge of the silverware laid out with the kind of precision that suggested someone had used a ruler. Alice sat at the head in the royal dress, one leg crossed over the other, a small cup at her right hand.
Across the table, arranged at respectful but operational distances, sat the ones Crow had expected and a few he hadn't.
General Darius occupied the seat nearest the head of the table—broad through the chest, his armor still on, the bearing of a man who treated meals as logistical exercises. Berthold sat further down, elbows off the table in the rigid way of someone raised on protocol, his eyes moving across the room with the practiced assessment of a man who catalogued exits.
Sharon stood near the sideboard, not seated, her black hair tied back, the maid uniform replaced by something closer to light field dress with dark fabric and clean lines. She'd spotted Crow's arrival before he cleared the doorway. Then she averted her gaze.
Crow found a seat toward the middle of the table, approximately three meters from Alice, and settled.
A servant placed a plate in front of him without being asked. He ate.
Alice watched him for a moment.
"Everything is ready," she said, to the table generally. The words carried the weight of a queen. "The expedition departs after this meal."
General Darius set down his cup. "The messenger?"
"Dimitri confirmed the delivery two hours ago." She tipped her head slightly, dismissing the follow-up before it surfaced. "The Hero will be in the realm soon."
Crow kept his eyes on his plate.
This food is too good, holy...
Berthold's fingers tapped once against the table's edge—quiet, precise, more thought than sound. He glanced toward Alice with the angled attention of a man choosing his moment.
"Your Majesty. Before the expedition departs, I'd like your authorization on a separate matter."
Alice's eyes shifted to him.
"I have some ideas for improving our intelligence architecture," Berthold continued, voice measured and unhurried. "The current situation—the Hero's movement, the border activity, the secondary houses in the north—all of it requires information we don't currently have access to."
He paused, apparently organizing the next sentence with some care.
"There is a guild. Human-operated. They call themselves Limpeza."
The name landed in the room with a degree of density. Darius's jaw tightened fractionally. Sharon didn't move, but something changed in her posture—the kind of micro-adjustment that meant a different level of attention.
Limpeza? That name sounds familiar.
"An information and enforcement organization," Berthold went on. "Old roots. Significant reach inside human-controlled territory. They don't advertise their services to non-humans, but they sell to whoever pays correctly. I have reason to believe they maintain a permanent presence in the Hero's city." A beat. "To make contact, I would need to go there directly. Infiltrate, in the loosest sense. Arrange an introduction through the right intermediary."
Alice considered him for a moment. Her expression yielded nothing.
"You're asking permission to walk into the Hero's city," she said.
"I'm asking permission to walk through it," Berthold said. "The contact window would be short. The mission's requirements are—specific. I won't be specifying them further."
The silence that followed wasn't hostile, but it was definitely the silence of a woman who was unhappy.
Crack.
The sound was sharp, like a small firecracker. A hairline fracture spidered across the fine porcelain of General Darius’s cup. Tea began to weep through the clay, staining his glove.
Darius didn't look at his hand. He kept his stone-cold gaze on Berthold. "You won't be specifying them further? To your Queen? Because they are... too specific?"
Alice raised her free hand, palm open—a silent, noble command that cut the General's indignation short.
"Granted," she said, and lifted her cup.
Berthold inclined his head. His fingers stopped tapping.
Crow ate.
Whatever he's not specifying... I'll find out when it becomes my problem. And it’ll become my problem for sure.
He finished the plate, declined the second offering, and set his fork down.
Alice's gaze found him across the table. "Sharon will accompany you as field commander for the expedition. Her orders carry my authority in the field." A pause, precise as everything else. "Try not to destroy anything I'll need later."
"Naturally," Crow said.
You're the one who shouldn't destroy anything, Alice.
He pushed back his chair, the heavy wood scraping against the stone floor. He offered a brief, respectful nod to the head of the table—not quite a bow, but enough to satisfy protocol—and turned to leave. The heat of the dining hall and the smell of expensive wine faded behind him as he stepped back into the cooler air of the stone corridors.
***
Sharon found him in the corridor outside the hall some seconds later, as the meal dispersed into movement and logistics. She fell in beside him without preamble, matching his pace.
"T-the expedition leaves from the inner courtyard," she said. "Your gear?"
"Already on."
She eyed the hilts of his Zweihänder and Claymore, nodding to herself as if checking a mental list. She didn't say another word.
They descended through the palace in silence. At the lower level, near the courtyard access, Sharon stopped at a set of iron-banded doors and pushed them open.
The inner courtyard spread before him. Cold air. Grey sky pressing flat against the towers, like always.
And the two golems standing in the center of it.
Crow stopped.
Golem 4 occupied the left side, motionless on its platform. The faint violet light bled from behind the 4 on its chest—steady, rhythmic, patient as a held breath. He didn't look at it for long.
It was the other one that caught his eye.
This guy again? They'd better have fixed his head.
(Next)
u/DontImplantThechip — 9 days ago
▲ 5 r/HFY
The geometry clown hadn't stopped.
Crow sat on the hot springs bench with his arms resting on his knees, steam curling past his face, and listened to the low, disjointed snickering still drifting through the cedar walls from whichever dark corner the thing had wedged itself into.
"...geometry... hehe... geometry..."
He'd stopped trying to locate the source. He'd stopped caring about the source too. At some point during the last 11 minutes, the sound had simply become part of the room, like the hiss of water on hot stones or the distant creak of the palace settling against itself.
Crow stood, draped the towel across his shoulder, and pushed through the hot springs backdoor that led to the change room.
Cool air met him in the corridor—the ordinary temperature of a hallway that hadn't been filled with steam. He moved through the change room, dressed without ceremony, and left the geometry enthusiast to its private geometric theories.
The kitchen found him the same way it always did: smell first, sound second. Something sizzled somewhere inside. He settled onto a stool at the central block.
Sophia was already there, her back to him, managing three things at once with finesse. She set a plate down in front of him before he asked, bread, something cured, an egg that had stopped being fully warm but hadn't committed to being cold. A cup followed. Black. Still too hot.
She didn't speak. Neither did he. He worked through the plate methodically, the way a man eats when he needs fuel fast, and let the silence hold.
Normally she’ll say something, but I understand. After what happened with her and Alice, I’d be shy too if I were in her place. Yeah, I can see the tips of her ears turning red... never mind. Better leave her alone.
When the cup was empty, he stood, rolled his shoulder once, and left.
***
The corridor outside his quarters felt longer at this hour, or maybe just quieter. He pushed the door open.
Black and gold velvet covered the walls. Across the room, a raven sat perched on the balcony—black marble, or obsidian; only the architects must know. It stared at him for a few brief seconds before spreading its wings and vanishing into the night. Crow saw it, but simply looked away, dismissing it as just another common bird of the estate. The enormous bed dominated the center, its scarlet silk sheets folded perfectly, and undisturbed. The fireplace in the corner still held enough embers to cut the chill.
Crow dropped into the chair near the hearth, elbows on knees, and stared at nothing for a moment.
Then he raised his right hand and looked at the ring.
"Don't look at me like that." The Sage's voice surfaced with the cautious energy of a man who had learned, recently, that silence was expensive. "I know that look. It's the 'I need information and you're going to provide it' look."
“Status.”
A pause. The ring pulsed once.
"Fine, fine. No need to get dramatic."
The window opened.
***
Status
Name: Crow (former name error) Soul Level 12
Title: The Spared One / Heavy Hand
Class: Soul Devourer / Grim Reaper
Situation: Pensive and Rested
STR 50
DEX 34
CON 59
INT 22
WIS 27
***
Learned Skills:
Hand to Hand Combat level 6 (+1)
Swordsmanship level 1
Persuasion level 3 (+1)
Grim Reaper Manifestation level 1 (new)
One-liner level 1 (new)
***
Passive Skills:
Quick Reflex – Your body reacts faster than your mind. Dodging strikes has become instinctive, though it doesn't guarantee good efficiency against all foes.
Enduring Soul – Your spirit refuses to break, allowing you to resist despair and pain, can continue fighting at low HP without losing consciousness. Physical wounds still hurt, but giving up was never an option for you.
Soul Devourer – Consume the essence of defeated enemies to restore a fragment of your own life force. The hunger is insatiable, and every bite carries a faint whisper of the fallen with the memories of them.
Frail Existence – Your existence is weak, you are not a full Grim Reaper. You cannot sustain your full power in the physical world, most skills are locked. Requires more Souls to stabilize.
Questionable Charm – You are seducing too many girls, through questionable means, for some reason luck is on your side in this matter. How did you even obtain this skill???
Smooth Talker – Congratulations, you’ve reached a level of audacity where common sense no longer applies. You can provoke, charm, or confuse anyone with a few syllables. Most people use blades to fight, but you can just use your mouth. How... efficient? (New)
Grim Reaper's Aura – A faint aura of death emanates from you, slightly unsettling nearby foes.
??? - */*+-/*-/2/32*-1*-/ 2/-*/123-*/
ERROR!
The user has a bugged passive skill. Its information cannot be accessed, because one does not naturally exist in this world.
Heavy Hand – Your hand is heavy. Whether you're swinging a sword or just trying to give a 'friendly' pat on the back, things tend to break. You should probably stop touching things. Or people. (New)
***
Crow read it, closed the status windows, and leaned back against the chair with a heavy sigh.
"Serious? 'One-liner'? Why do I have yet another skill based in talking?" Crow asked. "And how did I get this?"
"Well, it is exactly as written there," the Wise Sage said. "These are skills you have acquired, it’s not a magic system; you only have here what you can already use or have learned yourself. The first time is always difficult, but from the second time onward you already know it, that is why it's level 1. Mastery comes later. It is quite simple, really: your tongue has become so sharp lately that you can now taunt others with just a few syllables. Congratulations!"
“Right... now be quiet, I need to think.”
“Ok, ok,” the Wise Sage responded quietly.
The fire cracked once, throwing a brief orange bloom across the ceiling.
She wants to use that golem as a bomb. And the Hero walks into whatever we point him at because that's what Heroes do. Dutiful. Relentless. Designed to finish the story regardless of the cost.
He exhaled through his nose.
The story finishes with him either dead or winning. Those are the only two outcomes built into this world's logic. If it ends with him dead... the rest follows. The party falls apart. The fronts against this kingdom and the monsters are going to collapse. The world ends. Lily—
He stopped that thought where it stood.
She's alive. She has to be. Tomorrow, I will discover the truth.
The fire settled.
So I have one job on this expedition: make sure the Hero survives the bomb, along with his party. Whatever that requires. Alice thinks she's sending a small gift to make the Hero take some time off. But what she's actually doing is threatening to end the world faster.
The corner of his mouth moved.
But I have a plan... If that works, I change the outcome. Maybe not the whole story. Maybe just 1 page. But 1 page is enough to start.
He pressed both hands against his face, dragged them down slowly, and stared at the ceiling.
I can’t wait to retire from this military life, or should I say, forced conscription. I just want to find a farm and start chilling.
He didn't believe that was possible. But thinking about it helped. He moved to the bed and after some minutes he fell asleep.
***
Next morning...
“Geometry…”
Crow bolted upright in bed.
Nothing, absolute silence.
"Ah, it was only a dream... seriously," he muttered.
The knock came exactly when he expected it wouldn't.
Crow opened the door.
Sophia stood in the corridor in full maid uniform, posture impeccable, silver tray balanced across both forearms with the practiced ease of a professional. On the tray: a sealed envelope bearing the royal insignia, and, inexplicably, a small arrangement of dark flowers he couldn't identify.
"Her Majesty requests your presence in the Royal Banquet Hall," Sophia said, with a note of formality that lasted approximately one second before her eyes found his throat and stayed there. Then she began to drool.
Give me a break.
Crow snatched the envelope without opening it. "The flowers are a bit much."
Her head snapped back up. "They say you need to give them while they’re alive... and... just kidding!"
"Very funny Sophia… very funny. You can carry them yourself."
"I carry many things personally." She blinked, daub of drool appearing at the corner of her mouth. She caught it with the edge of her sleeve before it reached the tray. "Shall we?"
He gestured for her to lead. “Lead the way.”
She did, gliding ahead with those soundless steps that still unsettled him almost every single time, her heels making no contact, as if the floor were unwilling to report her presence. Crow followed her through the upper corridor, down the broad stair, past the gallery of unsmiling portraits and the double archway draped in dark brocade, until the smell of food reached him—real food, warm and properly prepared, not the functional fare of the kitchen at odd hours.
The Royal Banquet Hall opened ahead.
***
Long table. High ceilings. Candles burning in iron brackets at measured intervals, their light catching the edge of the silverware laid out with the kind of precision that suggested someone had used a ruler. Alice sat at the head in the royal dress, one leg crossed over the other, a small cup at her right hand.
Across the table, arranged at respectful but operational distances, sat the ones Crow had expected and a few he hadn't.
General Darius occupied the seat nearest the head of the table—broad through the chest, his armor still on, the bearing of a man who treated meals as logistical exercises. Berthold sat further down, elbows off the table in the rigid way of someone raised on protocol, his eyes moving across the room with the practiced assessment of a man who catalogued exits.
Sharon stood near the sideboard, not seated, her black hair tied back, the maid uniform replaced by something closer to light field dress with dark fabric and clean lines. She'd spotted Crow's arrival before he cleared the doorway. Then she averted her gaze.
Crow found a seat toward the middle of the table, approximately three meters from Alice, and settled.
A servant placed a plate in front of him without being asked. He ate.
Alice watched him for a moment.
"Everything is ready," she said, to the table generally. The words carried the weight of a queen. "The expedition departs after this meal."
General Darius set down his cup. "The messenger?"
"Dimitri confirmed the delivery two hours ago." She tipped her head slightly, dismissing the follow-up before it surfaced. "The Hero will be in the realm soon."
Crow kept his eyes on his plate.
This food is too good, holy...
Berthold's fingers tapped once against the table's edge—quiet, precise, more thought than sound. He glanced toward Alice with the angled attention of a man choosing his moment.
"Your Majesty. Before the expedition departs, I'd like your authorization on a separate matter."
Alice's eyes shifted to him.
"I have some ideas for improving our intelligence architecture," Berthold continued, voice measured and unhurried. "The current situation—the Hero's movement, the border activity, the secondary houses in the north—all of it requires information we don't currently have access to."
He paused, apparently organizing the next sentence with some care.
"There is a guild. Human-operated. They call themselves Limpeza."
The name landed in the room with a degree of density. Darius's jaw tightened fractionally. Sharon didn't move, but something changed in her posture—the kind of micro-adjustment that meant a different level of attention.
Limpeza? That name sounds familiar.
"An information and enforcement organization," Berthold went on. "Old roots. Significant reach inside human-controlled territory. They don't advertise their services to non-humans, but they sell to whoever pays correctly. I have reason to believe they maintain a permanent presence in the Hero's city." A beat. "To make contact, I would need to go there directly. Infiltrate, in the loosest sense. Arrange an introduction through the right intermediary."
Alice considered him for a moment. Her expression yielded nothing.
"You're asking permission to walk into the Hero's city," she said.
"I'm asking permission to walk through it," Berthold said. "The contact window would be short. The mission's requirements are—specific. I won't be specifying them further."
The silence that followed wasn't hostile, but it was definitely the silence of a woman who was unhappy.
Crack.
The sound was sharp, like a small firecracker. A hairline fracture spidered across the fine porcelain of General Darius’s cup. Tea began to weep through the clay, staining his glove.
Darius didn't look at his hand. He kept his stone-cold gaze on Berthold. "You won't be specifying them further? To your Queen? Because they are... too specific?"
Alice raised her free hand, palm open—a silent, noble command that cut the General's indignation short.
"Granted," she said, and lifted her cup.
Berthold inclined his head. His fingers stopped tapping.
Crow ate.
Whatever he's not specifying... I'll find out when it becomes my problem. And it’ll become my problem for sure.
He finished the plate, declined the second offering, and set his fork down.
Alice's gaze found him across the table. "Sharon will accompany you as field commander for the expedition. Her orders carry my authority in the field." A pause, precise as everything else. "Try not to destroy anything I'll need later."
"Naturally," Crow said.
You're the one who shouldn't destroy anything, Alice.
He pushed back his chair, the heavy wood scraping against the stone floor. He offered a brief, respectful nod to the head of the table—not quite a bow, but enough to satisfy protocol—and turned to leave. The heat of the dining hall and the smell of expensive wine faded behind him as he stepped back into the cooler air of the stone corridors.
***
Sharon found him in the corridor outside the hall some seconds later, as the meal dispersed into movement and logistics. She fell in beside him without preamble, matching his pace.
"T-the expedition leaves from the inner courtyard," she said. "Your gear?"
"Already on."
She eyed the hilts of his Zweihänder and Claymore, nodding to herself as if checking a mental list. She didn't say another word.
They descended through the palace in silence. At the lower level, near the courtyard access, Sharon stopped at a set of iron-banded doors and pushed them open.
The inner courtyard spread before him. Cold air. Grey sky pressing flat against the towers, like always.
And the two golems standing in the center of it.
Crow stopped.
Golem 4 occupied the left side, motionless on its platform. The faint violet light bled from behind the 4 on its chest—steady, rhythmic, patient as a held breath. He didn't look at it for long.
It was the other one that caught his eye.
This guy again? They'd better have fixed his head.
(Next)
Author's note: Thanks for following along so far, everyone! If you’re enjoying it, please leave an upvote to help us reach more people. Also, I’d really appreciate it if you could point out any grammar mistakes or parts that sound a bit off. Sometimes my brain slips or my keyboard just fails me.
u/DontImplantThechip — 9 days ago
▲ 2 r/redditserials
After her speech about the hero, and the ‘bomb’, they stepped into the shimmering rift.
The portal swallowed them whole.
Cold evaporated. The brine-and-iron smell of the docks dissolved mid-step, replaced by something denser—timber, stone dust, and the particular staleness of a space sealed against weather. Crow's boots hit flagstone instead of snow-dusted planks, and the sound changed accordingly: flat, close, absorbed by walls too thick to echo properly.
The warehouse stretched in every direction.
Crates occupied the floor in organized columns, stacked to twice a man's height, tagged with chalk markings he didn't recognize. Iron shelving ran the perimeter. Lanterns hung at intervals from ceiling hooks, their light steady and sourceless—magical, then, or fed by something that didn't need tending. The portal behind them remained fixed and cavernous, its shimmering edges humming with a restless energy while an occasional, erratic spark spat from the rift, vanishing before it could hit the floor.
Alice watched it.
Not with sentiment. With the clinical attention of someone confirming a calculation. Like she always does.
The portal remained there, motionless. A few more erratic sparks spat from its edges, flickering against the gloom. It looked as though the mechanism had glitched, frozen in a state of malfunction.
"Was this part of the plan?” he asked. “I don’t know about portals, but this doesn't seem like how they work.”
Alice's eyes remained on the portal.
"No," Alice said, flat and unapologetic. "The mages misjudged the window. It was configured to hold the palace destination for 11 minutes before transferring. Apparently, '11 minutes' and '10' are the same." A pause that carried the specific weight of a decision being catalogued for later, a bad decision. "I'll address that."
Somebody's going to have a bad week in this ‘company’.
Crow noted internally.
Alice smoothed a hand down the front of her dress once—brief, unconscious—and exhaled through her mouth.
"Wasteful," she said, with the flat affect of someone describing a broken tool. "The mana cost for dual-destination phasing at that scale is—" she paused, reconsidered, dismissed the calculation with a slight movement of her fingers. "Regardless. Necessary."
He glanced back.
Sophia stood two paces behind him, hands folded, expression neutral, present in the way furniture was present—occupying space without demanding acknowledgment. She hadn't made a sound since the magic department corridor. She hadn't made a sound through a portal crossing either. She'd been standing behind him this entire time and he'd registered her existence approximately twice.
She went so quiet that I forgot she was here.
He filed it away with mild interest.
Is she a rogue? She didn't make a sound and was almost motionless, so that I didn't even remember she was there, like she had become invisible. What the heck... that’s a skill, for sure.
Then he looked at Alice.
"There are three of us," he said. "Why not just teleport us straight there?"
Alice turned from the flickering portal and moved between the crates, her pace unhurried.
"Because the kingdom runs on the assumption that it won't." She didn't slow. "The defensive lattice covers every settlement of significant size—woven into the foundations, tied to the ley distribution. Teleportation into a protected zone doesn't just fail. It announces itself. Loudly." A brief pause. "If unrestricted teleportation functioned inside defended territory, invading a city, destroying a strategic target, and leaving before anyone located the source would be a logistical exercise. The kingdom's architectural defenses were not built by foolish people. Naturally, the same applies elsewhere."
Wait... is she calling me dumb between the lines? Whatever. There was no mention of this mechanic in the game. Anyway, this also means she can't just open a portal directly to where we're going.
"So a portal—" he tried to say, but she cut him off.
"—Would take time to establish against the lattice interference. Long enough to attract attention in the north and make people stop working on the capital to come see what’s going on. I'd rather not spend the effort managing that today." She stopped at a section of wall that looked identical to every other wall. "There's a faster route."
She raised her hand.
Her fingers snapped.
The sound hit wrong—too sharp, too resonant, like the snap had struck something solid hidden inside the air itself. And then the air responded.
Reality fractured.
Not broke—fractured. The way a mirror shatters but holds its pieces in place, each shard tilting at a slightly different angle, each one catching a slightly different version of the light. The warehouse didn't disappear. It split—divided into geometric sections that peeled away from each other like a disassembled diagram, the familiar stone and crates separating into planes that no longer agreed on their arrangement.
Wait a moment... I remember this.
Crow had experienced something like this before.
Not like this, exactly. But the quality of it—the particular texture of a space that existed outside the normal agreement between places—his body recognized it before his mind assembled the reference.
The cube, when it detonated. But something is different.
This is that place. Like an inventory subspace, but one she can enter herself instead of just storing items.
They stood somewhere that wasn't the warehouse and wasn't anywhere he could name. The geometry held—floor beneath his feet, ceiling vaguely above—but both suggestions rather than facts, the place treated physicality as optional, at best. The light came from no identifiable source and cast no identifiable shadows without logic. The air carried no smell. And beneath all of it, just at the threshold of hearing, murmurs—not voices, more like hearing language through a wall, all rhythm and no sense, pressing against the inside of his skull from the outside.
Crow's jaw set. He held it.
Behind him, fabric shifted. He heard a sound—a thin, terrified whimper escaping a girl’s throat, barely audible over the hum of the space.
He turned.
Sophia stood with both hands pressed against the sides of her head, palms flat over her ears, shoulders drawn inward. Not a combat posture. Not a defensive one. Something rawer than either—the involuntary contraction of a person whose nervous system had begun filing urgent complaints with no clear recipient. Her eyes were open but had stopped tracking properly, gaze landing slightly behind whatever she tried to focus on.
Alice moved.
Not quickly in a way that announced itself—not a lunge, not a dash. Simply: she was standing beside Crow, and then she was standing in front of Sophia, the intervening space handled so efficiently that Crow's eyes had simply failed to capture the transition. The hem of the royal dress settled.
"Ah." Alice looked at Sophia with the expression of someone recalling an overlooked variable. "After what occurred with Crow, I forgot. Most people don't tolerate this particular layer well." Her voice carried neither alarm nor guilt. Informational, as always. "This magic requires further polishing."
Sophia's breath came in shallow, effortful pulls.
Alice raised her right hand and placed it against the side of Sophia's face—palm curved gently along the jaw, thumb near the temple, the gesture carrying a precision that suggested it was not arbitrary. Not comfort. Placement.
"Sleep."
The word left Alice's mouth at half-volume, unhurried, and the magic in it didn't announce itself. No light. No sound. Just the word, and then Sophia's shoulders dropping a degree, and then another, the rigid tension of someone fighting a losing battle dissolving floor by floor as consciousness withdrew.
Sophia fell forward.
Alice was already there—had positioned herself perfectly for it, probably, which was why the geometry of it had been so deliberate. Sophia's face found Alice's shoulder and then slid past it, settling somewhere rather lower, and Alice accepted the weight with the composure of someone who had anticipated the trajectory exactly.
Her left hand came to rest on top of Sophia's head.
Slow. Unhurried. The particular weight of a hand that intended to stay.
She murmured something, “Shhh, we're already leaving.”
Crow caught the shape of it—syllables at a volume that reached him as vibration rather than sound, words that existed for Sophia and not for him, dropped into the narrowing space between wakefulness and absence like something placed rather than said. The hand on Sophia's head moved once. Barely.
He hadn't heard it. He'd read it in the stillness of the gesture, and he suspected that was intentional too.
Crow looked away.
The murmurs pressed closer. The light that had no source continued not casting shadows.
He looked back at Alice, who had shifted Sophia into her arms, cradling her against her chest like a sleeping infant. There was a sudden, aching tenderness in the way she tucked the girl’s head into the crook of her neck, a stark contrast to the cold efficiency he’d expected.
This is so funny, for some reason.
"Is this some sort of teleportation magic?" he asked.
Alice looked at him. "In a way, yes. It compresses the actual distance between points countless times over. It’s basically teleportation."
"How far?" Crow said.
Alice’s eyes met his, flat and unreadable. "Too many questions, Crow... Just know it’s close," she said, before turning away.
I know she’s not the best person, but this is a bit much, even for her. Is she mad? And what’s with this—carrying Sophia like a baby while giving the classic ‘we’re almost there’ brush-off... is she a mom now?
1 minute later.
The reality took form again and received them differently than the docks had.
No snow and wind, the air carried warmth and something underneath it—something with a faint metallic undertone that Crow's instincts flagged before his conscious mind processed it, not blood or rust, closer to ozone, but earthier. The smell of things being made.
A forge...
The room bore no resemblance to any chamber he'd passed through on the way to the magic department. The ceiling vaulted three stories overhead, supported by stone ribs that followed a geometry too precise to be decorative. Iron gantries lined the upper walls, connected by walkways. Below them, workbenches ran in parallel rows—not the chalk-circle tables of the robed mages upstairs, but proper fabrication surfaces, scarred with use, equipped with tools he could identify and tools he couldn't.
Tink, tink, tink.
Between each strike, a raspy, rhythmic murmur drifted through the heat.
A minion with a goofy face murmuring *“*Geometry… hehe… geometry…” Its eyes wide and unblinking as it hammered away.
Molds, clamps, measuring instruments, and chains suspended from pulley systems bolted to the gantries. Specialized forges built into alcoves along the far wall, their embers banked to maintenance heat.
A workshop, maybe a factory, the distinction felt academic.
Crow scanned the room as he followed her, aside from the idiot in the corner, no other workers were visible, yet the benches held evidence of recent occupation—tools left mid-arrangement, a measuring cloth draped over a stand, an open logbook on the nearest surface with fresh ink—but no one present. Whatever normally populated this space had been cleared, or had cleared itself.
Alice stopped.
At the center of the room, on a raised platform surrounded by the kind of supporting framework that suggested something tall and heavy, it stood.
A person? No, this was like that 'Kill' thing... no, it was... ‘K-kill?’
He mocked, mimicking the golem’s broken disc in his head.
Yeah, a golem similar to that psychopath.
The proportions approximated human like the K-kill thing—two arms, two legs, upright posture, a head that sat at the right height above shoulders broad enough to block the lantern light behind it.
It wasn't flesh, or stone, or anything with a soul. The material was too perfect, shaped with a precision that sat somewhere between engineering and art. It had joints meant for moving and hands built for work, but the face was a blank space that refused to be read. It didn't breathe, didn't twitch. It was a golem, plain and simple, despite how much effort someone had clearly wasted on the details.
On its chest, inlaid in a darker material against the primary surface—a number.
4.
Clean lines. Deliberate placement. A serial stamp probably.
Crow stared at it for a moment.
"Here." Alice's voice carried something he hadn't heard in it before—not warmth, exactly. More like when a person wants to show a work they care about. She stood at the platform's edge, her eyes on the construct, Sophia still held against her with practiced ease. "The fourth iteration."
She let the silence sit for exactly as long as it took to confirm he'd registered the number.
In the background, a feverish murmur rose again: "The geometry is wrong... hehe...”
Alice made eye contact with Crow. "The first three identified sequencing errors I hadn't anticipated." No apology in it. Pure engineering assessment. "Integration failures at the threshold between directed response and independent function. The third—" a brief pause, something passing through her expression too quickly to name—"the third nearly worked. Close enough to demonstrate the model's validity. Far enough to require starting over."
Ok Alice, lets just ignore the geometry clown in the background... yeah.
Then her gaze traced the construct from bottom to top with the slow, proprietary attention of someone reviewing long labor.
Tink, tink. “…Geometry… hehe…”
"The fourth holds," she said it quietly. Almost to herself. Then her eyes cut sideways to Crow, and the quality of attention shifted—back to the strategic register, precise and assessing. "Structurally. Functionally. This golem’ill be used tomorrow."
Crow looked at the 4 on the construct's chest, a faint light emanating from it.
Yeah, so it really is a bomb... you can see the light from the cube in its core. Ha… I know exactly where this is going.
"Right. I shall take Sophia to rest; I suggest you do the same," Alice said, her tone shifting back to that cold, organized efficiency. "Tomorrow, I will assemble a troop. You are to escort the bo—golem to the Hero. And don't worry—the goal isn't to kill him. Just to take him off the board for a while."
Alice turned without ceremony, Sophia's weight shifting against her chest as she adjusted her grip—one arm tucked beneath the woman's knees, the other across her back, with the same practiced ease one might carry a sleeping child. The fact that Sophia stood only slightly shorter than her seemed to register nowhere in Alice's posture. She simply walked, her stride unhurried and perfectly measured, heels clicking against stone in a rhythm that brooked no argument.
He gave the room one last look—the construct standing at its platform, the faint pulse of light leaking from the cube in its core, the number 4 etched clean against its chest. Somewhere in the shadows, the geometry enthusiast continued his quiet murmur.
Crow left.
He didn’t give it a second thought. After the geometry, the bombs, and all the madness he had seen, there was only one place left for him to go to relax.
The palace hot springs. This place is awesome.
The place had undergone some changes, likely due to the brawl that day. Instead of being nearby, the lockers were now behind a Japanese-style sliding door—probably to ensure no one got hurled into them again.
He shed his coat first, then everything else, folded nothing, draped the towel across his shoulder, and pushed through the cedar door into the rolling heat beyond.
Finally. Peace.
The bench creaked once under him. Steam rose in slow curtains from the stones. He tipped his head back, let the warmth press against his chest, his throat, the corners of his eyes—
"Geometry..."
He stilled.
Maybe I’m just hearing things now...
"...hehe..."
A pause.
The whisper curled through the steam like it belonged there. Patient. Delighted. Faintly reverent. And of course, a little crazed, but that was obvious.
Crow brought one hand up and pressed it flat against his face.
His shoulders shook first. Then his chest. No sound came out—he kept it silent, and contained, the particular laugh of a man who had long ago made his peace with the absurd.
He stayed like that for a long moment. Hand over his face. Steam rising around him.
“Geometry…”
"...Yeah," his voice came out low and almost fond.
For a moment there, I'd actually forgotten.
He dragged his hand down slowly, staring at the ceiling through the haze.
“…hehe…”
Somewhere, faintly, the goofy minion’s giggle echoed down the stones.
This place is absolutely infested with lunatics.
The steam offered no rebuttal.
Right. Relax.
Crow closed his eyes, trying to have an immersive experience in the hot springs.
Tomorrow is an important day.
I just have to make sure the Hero survives the 'bomb'.
(Next)
Author's note: Guys, thanks for reading so far! The commissioned cover is done, you can check it out here: (Art by ponkikih)
u/DontImplantThechip — 16 days ago
After her speech about the hero, and the ‘bomb’, they stepped into the shimmering rift.
The portal swallowed them whole.
Cold evaporated. The brine-and-iron smell of the docks dissolved mid-step, replaced by something denser—timber, stone dust, and the particular staleness of a space sealed against weather. Crow's boots hit flagstone instead of snow-dusted planks, and the sound changed accordingly: flat, close, absorbed by walls too thick to echo properly.
The warehouse stretched in every direction.
Crates occupied the floor in organized columns, stacked to twice a man's height, tagged with chalk markings he didn't recognize. Iron shelving ran the perimeter. Lanterns hung at intervals from ceiling hooks, their light steady and sourceless—magical, then, or fed by something that didn't need tending. The portal behind them remained fixed and cavernous, its shimmering edges humming with a restless energy while an occasional, erratic spark spat from the rift, vanishing before it could hit the floor.
Alice watched it.
Not with sentiment. With the clinical attention of someone confirming a calculation. Like she always does.
The portal remained there, motionless. A few more erratic sparks spat from its edges, flickering against the gloom. It looked as though the mechanism had glitched, frozen in a state of malfunction.
"Was this part of the plan?” he asked. “I don’t know about portals, but this doesn't seem like how they work.”
Alice's eyes remained on the portal.
"No," Alice said, flat and unapologetic. "The mages misjudged the window. It was configured to hold the palace destination for 11 minutes before transferring. Apparently, '11 minutes' and '10' are the same." A pause that carried the specific weight of a decision being catalogued for later, a bad decision. "I'll address that."
Somebody's going to have a bad week in this ‘company’.
Crow noted internally.
Alice smoothed a hand down the front of her dress once—brief, unconscious—and exhaled through her mouth.
"Wasteful," she said, with the flat affect of someone describing a broken tool. "The mana cost for dual-destination phasing at that scale is—" she paused, reconsidered, dismissed the calculation with a slight movement of her fingers. "Regardless. Necessary."
He glanced back.
Sophia stood two paces behind him, hands folded, expression neutral, present in the way furniture was present—occupying space without demanding acknowledgment. She hadn't made a sound since the magic department corridor. She hadn't made a sound through a portal crossing either. She'd been standing behind him this entire time and he'd registered her existence approximately twice.
She went so quiet that I forgot she was here.
He filed it away with mild interest.
Is she a rogue? She didn't make a sound and was almost motionless, so that I didn't even remember she was there, like she had become invisible. What the heck... that’s a skill, for sure.
Then he looked at Alice.
"There are three of us," he said. "Why not just teleport us straight there?"
Alice turned from the flickering portal and moved between the crates, her pace unhurried.
"Because the kingdom runs on the assumption that it won't." She didn't slow. "The defensive lattice covers every settlement of significant size—woven into the foundations, tied to the ley distribution. Teleportation into a protected zone doesn't just fail. It announces itself. Loudly." A brief pause. "If unrestricted teleportation functioned inside defended territory, invading a city, destroying a strategic target, and leaving before anyone located the source would be a logistical exercise. The kingdom's architectural defenses were not built by foolish people. Naturally, the same applies elsewhere."
Wait... is she calling me dumb between the lines? Whatever. There was no mention of this mechanic in the game. Anyway, this also means she can't just open a portal directly to where we're going.
"So a portal—" he tried to say, but she cut him off.
"—Would take time to establish against the lattice interference. Long enough to attract attention in the north and make people stop working on the capital to come see what’s going on. I'd rather not spend the effort managing that today." She stopped at a section of wall that looked identical to every other wall. "There's a faster route."
She raised her hand.
Her fingers snapped.
The sound hit wrong—too sharp, too resonant, like the snap had struck something solid hidden inside the air itself. And then the air responded.
Reality fractured.
Not broke—fractured. The way a mirror shatters but holds its pieces in place, each shard tilting at a slightly different angle, each one catching a slightly different version of the light. The warehouse didn't disappear. It split—divided into geometric sections that peeled away from each other like a disassembled diagram, the familiar stone and crates separating into planes that no longer agreed on their arrangement.
Wait a moment... I remember this.
Crow had experienced something like this before.
Not like this, exactly. But the quality of it—the particular texture of a space that existed outside the normal agreement between places—his body recognized it before his mind assembled the reference.
The cube, when it detonated. But something is different.
This is that place. Like an inventory subspace, but one she can enter herself instead of just storing items.
They stood somewhere that wasn't the warehouse and wasn't anywhere he could name. The geometry held—floor beneath his feet, ceiling vaguely above—but both suggestions rather than facts, the place treated physicality as optional, at best. The light came from no identifiable source and cast no identifiable shadows without logic. The air carried no smell. And beneath all of it, just at the threshold of hearing, murmurs—not voices, more like hearing language through a wall, all rhythm and no sense, pressing against the inside of his skull from the outside.
Crow's jaw set. He held it.
Behind him, fabric shifted. He heard a sound—a thin, terrified whimper escaping a girl’s throat, barely audible over the hum of the space.
He turned.
Sophia stood with both hands pressed against the sides of her head, palms flat over her ears, shoulders drawn inward. Not a combat posture. Not a defensive one. Something rawer than either—the involuntary contraction of a person whose nervous system had begun filing urgent complaints with no clear recipient. Her eyes were open but had stopped tracking properly, gaze landing slightly behind whatever she tried to focus on.
Alice moved.
Not quickly in a way that announced itself—not a lunge, not a dash. Simply: she was standing beside Crow, and then she was standing in front of Sophia, the intervening space handled so efficiently that Crow's eyes had simply failed to capture the transition. The hem of the royal dress settled.
"Ah." Alice looked at Sophia with the expression of someone recalling an overlooked variable. "After what occurred with Crow, I forgot. Most people don't tolerate this particular layer well." Her voice carried neither alarm nor guilt. Informational, as always. "This magic requires further polishing."
Sophia's breath came in shallow, effortful pulls.
Alice raised her right hand and placed it against the side of Sophia's face—palm curved gently along the jaw, thumb near the temple, the gesture carrying a precision that suggested it was not arbitrary. Not comfort. Placement.
"Sleep."
The word left Alice's mouth at half-volume, unhurried, and the magic in it didn't announce itself. No light. No sound. Just the word, and then Sophia's shoulders dropping a degree, and then another, the rigid tension of someone fighting a losing battle dissolving floor by floor as consciousness withdrew.
Sophia fell forward.
Alice was already there—had positioned herself perfectly for it, probably, which was why the geometry of it had been so deliberate. Sophia's face found Alice's shoulder and then slid past it, settling somewhere rather lower, and Alice accepted the weight with the composure of someone who had anticipated the trajectory exactly.
Her left hand came to rest on top of Sophia's head.
Slow. Unhurried. The particular weight of a hand that intended to stay.
She murmured something, “Shhh, we're already leaving.”
Crow caught the shape of it—syllables at a volume that reached him as vibration rather than sound, words that existed for Sophia and not for him, dropped into the narrowing space between wakefulness and absence like something placed rather than said. The hand on Sophia's head moved once. Barely.
He hadn't heard it. He'd read it in the stillness of the gesture, and he suspected that was intentional too.
Crow looked away.
The murmurs pressed closer. The light that had no source continued not casting shadows.
He looked back at Alice, who had shifted Sophia into her arms, cradling her against her chest like a sleeping infant. There was a sudden, aching tenderness in the way she tucked the girl’s head into the crook of her neck, a stark contrast to the cold efficiency he’d expected.
This is so funny, for some reason.
"Is this some sort of teleportation magic?" he asked.
Alice looked at him. "In a way, yes. It compresses the actual distance between points countless times over. It’s basically teleportation."
"How far?" Crow said.
Alice’s eyes met his, flat and unreadable. "Too many questions, Crow... Just know it’s close," she said, before turning away.
I know she’s not the best person, but this is a bit much, even for her. Is she mad? And what’s with this—carrying Sophia like a baby while giving the classic ‘we’re almost there’ brush-off... is she a mom now?
1 minute later.
The reality took form again and received them differently than the docks had.
No snow and wind, the air carried warmth and something underneath it—something with a faint metallic undertone that Crow's instincts flagged before his conscious mind processed it, not blood or rust, closer to ozone, but earthier. The smell of things being made.
A forge...
The room bore no resemblance to any chamber he'd passed through on the way to the magic department. The ceiling vaulted three stories overhead, supported by stone ribs that followed a geometry too precise to be decorative. Iron gantries lined the upper walls, connected by walkways. Below them, workbenches ran in parallel rows—not the chalk-circle tables of the robed mages upstairs, but proper fabrication surfaces, scarred with use, equipped with tools he could identify and tools he couldn't.
Tink, tink, tink.
Between each strike, a raspy, rhythmic murmur drifted through the heat.
A minion with a goofy face murmuring *“*Geometry… hehe… geometry…” Its eyes wide and unblinking as it hammered away.
Molds, clamps, measuring instruments, and chains suspended from pulley systems bolted to the gantries. Specialized forges built into alcoves along the far wall, their embers banked to maintenance heat.
A workshop, maybe a factory, the distinction felt academic.
Crow scanned the room as he followed her, aside from the idiot in the corner, no other workers were visible, yet the benches held evidence of recent occupation—tools left mid-arrangement, a measuring cloth draped over a stand, an open logbook on the nearest surface with fresh ink—but no one present. Whatever normally populated this space had been cleared, or had cleared itself.
Alice stopped.
At the center of the room, on a raised platform surrounded by the kind of supporting framework that suggested something tall and heavy, it stood.
A person? No, this was like that 'Kill' thing... no, it was... ‘K-kill?’
He mocked, mimicking the golem’s broken disc in his head.
Yeah, a golem similar to that psychopath.
The proportions approximated human like the K-kill thing—two arms, two legs, upright posture, a head that sat at the right height above shoulders broad enough to block the lantern light behind it.
It wasn't flesh, or stone, or anything with a soul. The material was too perfect, shaped with a precision that sat somewhere between engineering and art. It had joints meant for moving and hands built for work, but the face was a blank space that refused to be read. It didn't breathe, didn't twitch. It was a golem, plain and simple, despite how much effort someone had clearly wasted on the details.
On its chest, inlaid in a darker material against the primary surface—a number.
4.
Clean lines. Deliberate placement. A serial stamp probably.
Crow stared at it for a moment.
"Here." Alice's voice carried something he hadn't heard in it before—not warmth, exactly. More like when a person wants to show a work they care about. She stood at the platform's edge, her eyes on the construct, Sophia still held against her with practiced ease. "The fourth iteration."
She let the silence sit for exactly as long as it took to confirm he'd registered the number.
In the background, a feverish murmur rose again: "The geometry is wrong... hehe...”
Alice made eye contact with Crow. "The first three identified sequencing errors I hadn't anticipated." No apology in it. Pure engineering assessment. "Integration failures at the threshold between directed response and independent function. The third—" a brief pause, something passing through her expression too quickly to name—"the third nearly worked. Close enough to demonstrate the model's validity. Far enough to require starting over."
Ok Alice, lets just ignore the geometry clown in the background... yeah.
Then her gaze traced the construct from bottom to top with the slow, proprietary attention of someone reviewing long labor.
Tink, tink. “…Geometry… hehe…”
"The fourth holds," she said it quietly. Almost to herself. Then her eyes cut sideways to Crow, and the quality of attention shifted—back to the strategic register, precise and assessing. "Structurally. Functionally. This golem’ill be used tomorrow."
Crow looked at the 4 on the construct's chest, a faint light emanating from it.
Yeah, so it really is a bomb... you can see the light from the cube in its core. Ha… I know exactly where this is going.
"Right. I shall take Sophia to rest; I suggest you do the same," Alice said, her tone shifting back to that cold, organized efficiency. "Tomorrow, I will assemble a troop. You are to escort the bo—golem to the Hero. And don't worry—the goal isn't to kill him. Just to take him off the board for a while."
Alice turned without ceremony, Sophia's weight shifting against her chest as she adjusted her grip—one arm tucked beneath the woman's knees, the other across her back, with the same practiced ease one might carry a sleeping child. The fact that Sophia stood only slightly shorter than her seemed to register nowhere in Alice's posture. She simply walked, her stride unhurried and perfectly measured, heels clicking against stone in a rhythm that brooked no argument.
He gave the room one last look—the construct standing at its platform, the faint pulse of light leaking from the cube in its core, the number 4 etched clean against its chest. Somewhere in the shadows, the geometry enthusiast continued his quiet murmur.
Crow left.
He didn’t give it a second thought. After the geometry, the bombs, and all the madness he had seen, there was only one place left for him to go to relax.
The palace hot springs. This place is awesome.
The place had undergone some changes, likely due to the brawl that day. Instead of being nearby, the lockers were now behind a Japanese-style sliding door—probably to ensure no one got hurled into them again.
He shed his coat first, then everything else, folded nothing, draped the towel across his shoulder, and pushed through the cedar door into the rolling heat beyond.
Finally. Peace.
The bench creaked once under him. Steam rose in slow curtains from the stones. He tipped his head back, let the warmth press against his chest, his throat, the corners of his eyes—
"Geometry..."
He stilled.
Maybe I’m just hearing things now...
"...hehe..."
A pause.
The whisper curled through the steam like it belonged there. Patient. Delighted. Faintly reverent. And of course, a little crazed, but that was obvious.
Crow brought one hand up and pressed it flat against his face.
His shoulders shook first. Then his chest. No sound came out—he kept it silent, and contained, the particular laugh of a man who had long ago made his peace with the absurd.
He stayed like that for a long moment. Hand over his face. Steam rising around him.
“Geometry…”
"...Yeah," his voice came out low and almost fond.
For a moment there, I'd actually forgotten.
He dragged his hand down slowly, staring at the ceiling through the haze.
“…hehe…”
Somewhere, faintly, the goofy minion’s giggle echoed down the stones.
This place is absolutely infested with lunatics.
The steam offered no rebuttal.
Right. Relax.
Crow closed his eyes, trying to have an immersive experience in the hot springs.
Tomorrow is an important day.
I just have to make sure the Hero survives the 'bomb'.
(Next)
Author's note: Guys, thanks for reading so far! The commissioned cover is done, you can check it out here: (Art by ponkikih)
u/DontImplantThechip — 2 days ago