Under the Bridge

[You]

Dear Reader,

The story you are about to hopefully read was part of the Fate/Nasuverse Discord Server Writing Contest held from October 6th 2021 to October 27th 2021.

The prompt was as follows:

The rules for the prompt will be this:
1) Word count 500 - 2000 max
2) Deadline will be midnight 20th October +2 UTC afterwards we will have 1 week of public voting for the best story
3) The prompt is the fandom favourite false "Zelretch the Troll" do whatever you want with it. The submitted story must contain this phrase at least once, the usage is up to you
4) You are not allowed to divulge which story is yours and you may not discuss competition ideas (after all you wouldn't want your idea stolen amirite?)

I had an idea, but 2000 words couldn’t do it justice. There was also no way I could finish writing it in a bit more than two weeks. I submitted an outline with the last chapter hidden and told myself that I would finish it before 2021 was over and start 2022 working on Mythologie. It’s the end of 2022 and I still haven’t finished it, yet. I’m almost done. I hope to be done with the final chapter soon. After 30,000 words, there’s more than enough on this short story turned novella to be shared.

I would like to thank Leftovers for beta-ing as well as writing Death Parade and The Jeweller's Hands. Both served as large inspirations for this story. Sleepmode for an OC who was referenced. Also, Comun, who confirmed a romanization suspicion I had.
Please enjoy the misadventures of Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg’s apprentice, a simple troll named Retch.

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Table of Contents

1\
\Zelretch. The troll —
2\
\Zelretch — the troll. . .
3\
\Zelretch? The troll —
4\
\Zelretch! The troll —
5\
6\
7\
8\

Epilogue\

[Random]

Oh, holy shit, I was thinking the other day how it would have been awesome to be around when Mythologie was still being posted. A new generation will get the chance to experience a You fic as it happens.

[You]

1\ Monaco

Retch the troll, apprentice of Wizard Marshal Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg, crossed the length of the paved wharf and lowered the stray meow meow he collected from the alleyway behind Master’s café earlier that morning onto the concrete dock. On trembling paws, the tabby stumbled from calloused palms onto an equally rough concrete wharf. After letting out a pained cry, it began pawing at the troll’s bulbous right toe which jutted out from the numerous thongs that made up the homemade rawhide sandal. With each feeble swipe, the tabby wobbled, almost toppling over before precariously regaining its balance at the last moment. The unsteady feline was neither malnourished nor too well-fed; its paws simply lacked sufficient strength to bear its weight.

Realizing his mistake, Retch grunted before reaching down and taking the tabby back into the crook of his elbow.

They stood — a troll and a struggling tabby overlooking a small cove that had been carved into the concrete wharf. A smattering of sun-bathers was already spread across the artificial beach, hoping to catch early-morning rays before the summer sun roasted the port. The troll paid them no heed; his breakfast of hearty leftover stew had been filling. Speaking of food, the crisp seaside air tasted like half-dried, salted meat. The salt, left too long beside alchemical reagents. The meat, slightly rancid from decay. Fit to eat, but in no way appetizing.

Enough dawdling. Master always said time grew as a tree, but Retch knew for a fact that time, like human money, didn’t grow on trees. He had checked many trees.

Impossibly gently for one with his physique, the troll laid a hand onto the tabby’s downy head.

“NNNAAaaaarR—”

A stifled yelp.

The troll’s hand, almost half the length of the tabby, pet its head before scratching under its ears. Before long, only soft, peaceful purrs remained. Reassuringly, the firm palm around meow meow’s head tightened. Slight pressure, at first. Then, a cluster of pops. The purring ceased, and Retch wiped a sticky palm against his vest. A dark stain bled into the tanned leather like a stone absently dropped on a riverbank.

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Under the Bridge

kaleid planar smile, 9 lives shooting moon

all burned bridges lead to genius ⇆ endless summertime, play ball

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Where to bury the meat? A sun-drenched beach was the perfect resting place for a meow meow, but beach-goers would quickly excavate the corpse. Then, the sea? Revolting. Only those born in water should return to the water. Master thought that was nonsense because life in this world originated from the oceans. Master saw and knew better than Retch, but too many humans would rather risk the river than pay the troll toll. They had dashed themselves against the jagged rocks, becoming sacks of meat. Bloated and waterlogged until they were inedible, the meat sacks clogged the river. Retch hated wading into the brackish, icy water to dredge them out, but it was Retch’s job to keep the river aflow. Had. His previous occupation.

Now, he was a student. Students learned, but no one had taught him how to find a suitable location to bury meat where humans lived. Retch preferred to play; that’s why his tummy was fluttering. Quickly now, quickly, finish Master’s request because waiting for him was—

He needed to concentrate on the task at hand. What a glum thought, what a dead meow meow, and to think, what an even more decayed smell lay portside. With the sun overhead beginning to bake it out, the stink wasn’t too unpleasant. Like how stagnant ponds pooling with detritus stank of death at night, but lapsed into an offensive musk in the morning. Though that boat would never fit on the forest floor. It was as large as some of the buildings in the city, structures that blotted out the sky without having any leaves.

With a smile on his face, Master often said grandiose men liked grandiose coffins, but laying in such a shiny coffin was worse than jumping into the river. Predators would snatch up every morsel before any rot settled in. Master would raise a dignified eyebrow if Retch retorted. Master loved shiny things too.

With the cat meat still in the crook of his elbow, Retch lumbered to the end of the gangway. The polished deck reflected the summer Mediterranean sun — a slice of resort paradise shimmering like a mirage, submerging the pool, deck chairs, and flapping pennants in its heat haze. Luxurious, but not so neat and tidy as to be uninviting. Forget the snack cat. Forget this assignment. Retch wanted nothing more but to dive into the pool and begin bouncing beach balls against the fantastical water features. The one thing stopping him was:

“Quel imbécile, did not the announcer announce we were resupplying last night? Go lose your money somewhere else, big dog. It’s Monaco for God’s sake. You’ll find a game in the gilded shithole you crawled out of this morning.”

A corpse was sprawled on a tanning chair. It was large in human sizes and its sunhat constantly flapped in the wind, threatening to sail away but never managing to be free of the bald head. Magic? Then, it must also be magic keeping him cool under that black trenchcoat.

The corpse propped himself up to flick a half-smoked cigarette overboard before eying Retch.

“Beurk! You’re tough on the eyes. Step back, step back, you ree-eek like an orphaned Ghoul. I cleaned up enough of those back during my Exe— EEh. . . is that. . . well, well, well, I’m on the roulette table tonight, big dog. I’ll raise you double for that Mystic Code around your nonexistent neck.”

Instinctively, Retch reached for the talisman. An emerald with three interlocking triangles carved into it. Humans ran away screaming if he didn’t wear it. With it, they called him ‘playa,’ and asked if he played ball. Retch wanted so badly to play ball.

All in due time. Master’s words — Retch wasn’t sure dues and times had much hold over Master in the first place. Others called Master, the Great Master. Never Retch. Master was great, Master, and even a great master. However, Great Master implied a Less Master, so Master could not be Great Master, only Master.

The moving corpse rose from the tanning chair, red eyes alight under a pair of aviators.

Retch must have stayed silent for too long, “No gamble. I. . .”

“If you’re not here to gamble, why would I let your troll ass in, big dog?” The corpse shifted his gaze to the meow meow’s unmoving body.

“To Play. First Practical. . . Master.”

“Lord, this is why I hate dealing with demi-humans. Take your dead cat and get lost. Or would you like to find out first-hand how deadly the Casa’s defenses are?”

It always ended like this. Retch tried to explain. He tried until his eyes brimmed with tears, but they never understood. Retch never quite caught the knack of understanding birdsong. Humans were worse. Not only was human noise quick, and unlike bird chirps, words were wrapped up in empty expressions that didn’t convey meaning, only abstraction that Retch wasn’t privy to.

Oh, if only he had a Mystic Code that allowed for telepathy. Master’s policy was that Retch held responsibility for everything he brought back with him while “enduring hell.” Sink or swim. Even after Retch lost most of his left ear, Master refused to divulge an artifact’s function or potency. Not wanting to lose his remaining ear, Retch didn’t touch things he did not understand anymore (most of the artifacts he came across). He couldn’t leave the pretties and the sparklies alone, though. Those he placed in a box his Master had gifted him on the first day of his apprenticeship. Only to look at because Master had instructed him to place his failing grades in that box. Pretty things made his failures easier to remember.

The reality was that Retch had no telepathic Mystic Code. All he had was a Master who could kill him, an eternal reminder of that fact in his pouch, and a very annoyed moving corpse barring him entry. Beyond the bridge, even further than the lure of the beach balls in the pool, was a waiting Friend. That made finding the courage to try again with the moving corpse much easier.

“Ahoy, Quatre, network says you clocked in. Sun got you feeling anemic, yet?” Encroaching pollution. Not merely death that was so common in the forest, but a wrongness that coated the tip of the tongue with a rancid aftertaste. A blood guzzler. It held out a bag filled with blood to the sunbathing corpse. “Hair of the dog. Oh? And who is this big ol’ dear?”

“A troll.”

He was not a mere corpse but a blood guzzler too. Retch had trouble distinguishing between weak blood guzzlers and walking corpses. He could smell it now, it was faint in the male, but the characteristic disorder underneath the surface decay was present.

“A troll, who, matey?” She tapped her left pump on the gleaming deck.

“A troll, Senpai.” He hissed, snapping to attention and taking his aviators off. “What is with Lord Vandelstam’s obsession with restructuring the conglomerate every decade? Implementing Japanese efficiency is one thing, but making the modes of address mandatory? Buying a godforsaken women’s baseball team?”

The stronger blood guzzler shrugged. “Ask him yourself. Might want to do it before explaining why you’re harassing Number Three’s slick.”

The wind had finally died down, yet the weaker blood guzzler’s hat which had withstood the fiercest summer, mid-morning sea breezes the Mediterranean had to offer fluttered away. Shades crushed in his hand, his red eyes lingered on his superior.

“Z-Zelretch. The troll is Zelretch’s—”

“A troll missing an ear, wearing a jewel Mystic Code that conceals his appearance. You weren’t listening this morning were you or did you gorge yourself during liberty. . . ”

“I— You can’t find any virgins in Monaco unless you’re into kids, Senpai, so me and the boys—”

She cut his words short. Not with force, at least, not at first. The weaker blood guzzler’s mouth seized up, his eyes trained on the plastic blood bag that was carelessly tossed away. Salivating, he stretched his free hand out at superhuman speed to salvage his breakfast. Too slow. A flick of her wrist caught him square in the chest. Flesh against flesh shouldn’t have sounded like two mountain boars jousting. Naturally, the weaker was tossed across the deck until the pool’s handrails caught him square in the chest.

With the same claw, she plucked the bag of blood just before it touched the deck.

“Sucking the monkey, really? Forget about breakfast just like you forgot yourself, Quatre. Now I think about it, the Trois could use your help in the bilge. Freshly baked donuts. Delicious. Try not to get waterlogged. You’re. . . on the roulette table again tonight and you know how bloating frightens our clientele.”

As her subordinate pulled himself out of the tangle of metal, the blood guzzler bowed at Retch, her fangs glistening. “Lord Vandelstam is expecting you, dear troll.”

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The blood guzzler led him away from the coffin and back towards the dock. The staccato click-clack of her heels against asphalt punctured the crashing waves slapping against the wharf supports. Soon the unlikely pair, with the cat meat still in tow, were halfway across the parking lot. As long as they were asleep, cars no longer made Retch nervous. On the other side of the bridge, a blood guzzler that didn’t sleep in its coffin during the day did. Master didn’t sleep in a coffin either.

Before the troll could calm himself, the blood guzzler stopped in front of a patch of crimson plastic chairs and tables haphazardly scattered about like wildflowers. In the middle of the plastic meadow was an unmanned information desk, beside which stood a single shipping container, a stark contrast to the gilded extravagance the coffin promised.

The female blood guzzler motioned for Retch to enter. He obliged, crouching so his head didn’t brush the ceiling. Sundries, knickknacks, baubles to delight. The entire container was filled with a paralyzing amount of choice that endlessly simulated every sense. Plastic clamshells, cardboard displays, and overflowing bargain barrels invited every intrepid tourist to dig through hundreds of the same items in order to find the perfect one for that special someone waiting breathlessly back home.

Could he see them all? Could he own them all?

The store whispered, of course. He would have a bit of everything all of the time if only this store was his.

“Bonjour.” Behind the counter, like a black owl on a tree branch, one of the most beautiful humans Retch had ever seen was perched atop the backless stool. “Can I help you?”

Her monotone sagged her delicate features. Her peat-dark hair spilling over towards one side became a shade duller. Her unfurrowed face framed a set of piercing eyes, petulant instead of soulful. Even if, unlike the planet, a troll didn’t abide by the human standard of beauty, Retch thought she was the type humans glanced at even when procuring food with their mates.

Whether her human form had been so or the curse had modified her, guzzling blood had been kind to her. In contrast, the wrongness flooded out from her, choking the stale air a single ceiling fan barely circulated.

The instant she saw the lifeless body that Retch still held in the crook of his arm, her pristine beauty did not merely evaporate, it sublimated. Her face was contorted, black veins like monstrous etchings were scrawled across its surface.

“T-Tabatha—” she moaned. With neither sound nor any preparatory movement, she shot out from her perch. “Ma jolie fille—!”

A guided missile, she plowed into the towering Retch, pinning his incredible bulk to the linoleum floor.

“GGGGaaahaHHHH. . .”

Retch’s moan was drowned out as every shelf in the shipping container tumbled, clattering against each other in a tumultuous roar.

The floor buckled, then cracked underneath. How much force was necessary to elevate the temperature so the linoleum expanded and contracted in a simple exchange?

Straddling his chest, eyes ablaze with cursed blood energy, his executioner dropped her raised claw like a guillotine. She paid no attention to the meat that instigated this attack in the crook of his arm. The bloodlust had overridden the ability to care.

Retch didn’t resist. The weak were meat, so there could be no regrets. Not for stolen life, time, or the chance to play with Friend today. This blood guzzler was strong. Her wrongness was greater than the one who led him to the shop, but the reason why he didn’t resist wasn’t just because of her strength. The moment she raised her hand, Retch no longer felt attached to the world, for the figure behind her plunged the entire souvenir store into a wrongness so deep that the troll finally understood how those bodies he dredged from the bottom of his river felt.

Her falling claw was slapped away — like a parent did when a child played too long with their meal.

Her disbelieving head was severed from the base of her neck — like a parent did when a child. . . even troll parents didn’t do that to their children.

Lord Vandelstam, the blood taker Master asked Retch to meet, held out a bloody hand. The troll didn’t take it; instead, he offered the meat. The blood taker held Retch’s gaze for a moment. Cold fury — like all the world rested on the edge of a coin. Beyond that was a wrongness so deep that Retch averted his gaze before that metaphorical coin was flipped.

Holding a tabby corpse with bloody pulp for a head by the scruff of its neck and dragging a corpse that now possessed half a head in the other, the blood taker headed towards an open door behind the counter. This was the end for Retch. If the blood taker passed through that door, he would not return. Failure meant no game, so Retch had to finish what Master asked of him and face death.

When the older blood taker felt Retch’s eyes on him again, he turned and smiled, like a kindly grandfather. Lord Vandelstam would kill Retch, not because of hunger, hate, or pleasure. All those were understandable reasons. What he felt from the regal blood taker chilled Retch to the bone like dredging corpses from the river during winter never did. Beyond malice. Beyond killing intent. Beyond wrong. Nothing was behind that smile. Listless boredom, so you simply did something. Interest, not because you were curious about what was on the other side of the bridge, but because otherwise, the bridge had no meaning.

“I won’t be a second.”

No, he wouldn’t. Master was the Second.

Left with nothing to do until his own execution, Retch made himself useful and picked up as many shelves as he could. He would have done a better job if he hadn’t tried to read what went on each shelf before trying to find that item strewn on the ground. What might the shelf have looked like before it fell down; did it look like how he imagined it? The souvenir shop couldn’t help being a distraction for the troll who had lived in a mountain forest all his life.

Lord Vandelstam returned, the scrunched-up sleeves of his dress shirt dabbled with red, the tailored pinstripe vest that contrasted Retch’s hide one was immaculate. With an aggressively amused expression, the blood taker stood amidst the wreckage. The death sentence had not been revoked, only delayed.

“I’d ask if the old man is doing well, but knowing him—” A foot tapped against one of the re-raised racks, testing its stability. “They really don’t make them like they used to. At what point did innovation necessitate such a dingy dockside souvenir store? There’s one more fitting my style adjacent to the Prince’s palace and of course a small one in the Casa itself in case a patron would rather indulge their modern appetites. So how extraordinary is it that this. . .” His arms swept across the room, the flourish sending flecks of his courtier’s spatter across the re-raised racks, painting snow globes polka-dot. “Outsells both. The future humanity dreamed of is the Age of Will You Buy More Souvenirs, hah.” Neither derisive nor laudative, just a biting laugh.

“Store fresh meat?” Retch licked his lips as his gaze slid across the door to the back where the humanitarian blood taker had taken his courtier.

“Me, a Bluebeard?” His claws mimed stroking an imaginary stubble before allowing his blood-red eyes to turn flat. “If that’s the best you can come up with, the old man definitely hasn’t found a successor. You may be paying the toll, after all. I’m sure you have experience with that, albeit on the other end.”

Cringing, Retch tried to explain, “Under ground. Cave. Store eats. Good plan. Blood drink.”

“Yes, yes, for a typical Apostle, but disappointingly, the office where Katarina is recovering in is only an office. These souvenirs represent me. I know, I know. A lacking representation, but I am not so much of a liar to make this into a blood lair. The other Ancestors may entertain themselves constructing and ruling kingdoms of the Dead within bounded fields to hide their apathy from the Church, but all who come to Van Fem’s Casa see they are free to purchase a souvenir.”

Goodwill made manifest in a dingy shipping container. Purchase something solely intended to remind you of the best days of your life or bestow part of what you enjoyed to those you hold dear.

Not only rulers of their kingdoms, but the Dead Apostle Ancestors were also those kingdoms manifest. By making souvenir stores national policy, the Demon Lord of the Financial World challenged the other rulers in a way no other Ancestor could. Look upon my works and despair. Mine was built with naught curse, Ideé, or Skill, yet how sublime this worldly kingdom floats.

The regal blood taker bent down to pick up one of many scattered pocket watches and placed it on an empty shelf. The previous tussle had dented the case, warping the engraving of the Casa.

“Souvenir, memento — memento mori, but not in my house, so gamble away the night as you deem fit.”

Not a Principle, only a statement dripping with monstrous despondency. Life was the uncertain flash of certain death. This uncertainty was the only way the crimson king connected with his court. Without gambling anything, a mere troll had forced the blood taker’s hand against his own courtier. Unforgivable.

“Coffin bright much. For Retch. Here, comfortable. Bad Retch. Was comfortable.”

The gentleman blood taker wryly smiled, teeth showing. Elegance and finery were stamps of quality worldwide; but in Monaco, the Casa’s brand of extravagance was deemed a facade — a midsummer’s night dream never allowed to overstay its welcome. This entire portside principality had been built on such vapors. What humans wanted after the clock struck midnight was a burger that tasted like systematic murder. Lord Vandelstem would never ask the chef puppets to mock their purpose to such an extent, so how about a souvenir shop instead?

Despite the lighthearted nature, the previous exchange left the troll feeling like the beasts he cornered in the forest. That was natural. Yet, the blood taker had not struck, first out of consideration of Master and then to understand the troll. No blood drinker had ever wanted that before; perhaps everything really was a game to this one. Good, Retch liked games.

“Why did you kill the cat?”

Easy. Retch was worried he would be asked what Lord Vandelstam thought. Retch was not Lord Vandelstam so he would have to guess. This question was about Retch. If there was one person Retch knew, it was Retch.

“Broken things. . . can’t be fixed.” Retch started before halting. In his enthusiasm to answer, he forgot he was verbalizing his lumbering thoughts. Oh, if only Master would give him a Mystic Code that allowed for telepathy. “After break. Thing can mended. Mended. . . not fixed. Fall happened if fall. Very if not mended now. Hurt long until no hurt, inside hurt-no-longer-hurt worse—” He fumbled for the words before giving up and pointing to the pocket watch the blood taker placed on the shelf.

“Splintered?”

That was a different troll. Retch shook his head and tapped the engraving with a sausage-like finger.

“Bent.”

“Yes. Bent. Meow-meow inside, bent. Meow-meow heart more bent.”

With less a snap and more a crumble, the pressure hanging in the shipping container crashed as Lord Vandelstam’s red eyes glazed over. An unsatisfactory answer, but not so unsatisfactory to merit execution. The unsatisfactory in this case lay in the savage honesty. Neither right nor correct, but it wasn’t a lazy excuse. An answer you could gamble your life blindly following. That type of unsatisfactory answer.

“It was just a cat,” Lord Vandelstam sighed. “She loved them — loves them. If I recall, she said they were her only friends when she was human. You can feel it, the magical energy from her curse.”

Retch shook his head, “No. Feel death.”

Lord Vandelstam raised an eyebrow. “Only my most enterprising employees are allowed to man — I dread to suppose such a term is no longer courteous. I’m trying to foster more inclusivity since this is inherently quite the hostile work environment. Either way, after she was turned, all her cats fled. She kept her favorite, the one you killed.”

That didn’t make sense.

“Meow-meow not blood drinker.”

“Every time they expire, without fail, she goes out and finds a new one as close to the previous as possible. She could evoke the spirit of the original and make a familiar, but I hazard that would defeat the principle behind the hobby. Call it an exercise in futility. Call it typical vampiric ennui. She cares for that cat, the only link she’ll allow herself to her former life.”

“Bent?” Retch tapped the pocket watch again.

“She flattens their bones so they don’t escape. They try, but don’t get very far. A mildly unpleasant distraction but no more so than say, endlessly pursuing someone to defile their convictions. In that respect, I suppose your answer is equally valid. An apprentice of Schweinorg would be the type to eliminate distortions, though I’ve never been sure what that says about him as an Ancestor.” Lord Vandelstam, lost in his reverie, mused.

Katarina, the blood guzzler, didn’t realize that by flattening the tabby’s bones to ensure that it would stay by her side, the cat was no longer the cat she loved or even a replacement for the original cat. The cat had to die. No matter what healing would allow the cat to stand on its own paws, it had lived long enough in that flattened state that its heart had been flattened too. No matter how flat its bones might be, the bent nature could never be straightened. If the cat could have been saved, it was before its heart had become distorted.

A human was turned into a blood guzzler. The meow-meows who loved the human did not love the blood guzzler. The blood guzzler who still loved the meow-meows could not bear this, so she continued to love the meow-meows against their will. The story was as simple as that. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. Copy, paste. Eventually, the vestigial furrow of that love produced a giant tower of flattened cats. The blood guzzler loved the tower, a monument to her love, not the flattened cats themselves. No wonder the original was quickly forgotten and the blood guzzler nestled her affections into the ghost of ghosts.

“If you do not mind me saying, and I do not say this lightly, but you’re quite the novelty, uncouth as you are. I haven’t been this taken since—” He blinked twice, snapping himself away from an unwanted memory, and frowned. “Would you like to play a game?”

Retch’s beady eyes lit up.

Play? Play! This wasn’t his promised play date and he still had to complete his Master’s task, but, a game! Hopefully, the rules weren’t too complicated. He could never remember all the rules.

Lord Vandelstam glided towards the cashier’s counter. Retch stumbled in pursuit, half out of enthusiasm, the other half because he tried his best not to crush the merchandise that still littered the floor.

“Displaying these in barrels would save on packaging, but patrons always insist on knowing they’re fair.”

Plucking a packet from a display, Lord Vandelstem tore the top, plastic clamshell and all. He casually tossed the pair of dice that rolled out of the clamshell in the air and caught them in his palm. “A simple game. Whoever rolls the most pips wins.”

“Gamble?”

“Is there any other way to play?”

The blood taker’s cursed blood energy seeped into the dice. Magic. Oh yes, this was going to be fun.

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“Eleven”

The twenty-seventh out of thirty-six rolls.

“Seven. . .”

“Three”

“Seven—!”

“Ten”

“Seven. . .”

Too caught up in the thrill of the game to pay attention to his opponent’s bemused expression, the troll across from Van grunted the numbers he rolled. To him, each outcome was a wholly independent event. Soaring exultations were forgotten in an instant, swallowed by the deepest despair of a loss and vice versa. There was no sense of gain or loss — the gamble was binary, win or lose. Thus, thrill might have been too malicious a word for the troll. It was the industry of the activity that captivated his brutish attention. In truth, the troll’s peculiar method was the statistically correct way to play dice; however, any child, let alone an apprentice of Schweinorg, should have instantly noticed the pattern unfolding on the glass countertop, the illusion of clustering probability be damned.

The dice was enchanted to serve as the main axis of a probability equalizing field, one of Van’s inventions that he employed during the Casa’s casino duels. The point of any casino was not to win all the money, but to ensure the customer would come the next day to lose some more money. Some services lured customers in with services, others promotions, and most rented out spaces to serve as a venue for conferences and conventions. Van held all three in disdain, so he organized duels. A clash between gladiators armed with nothing but desperation, greed, and providence. Yet, when the gamble was to produce a spectacular gamble, there was always the chance of a disappointing climax. As a gambling man, Van would not allow such a chance.

The spectators of those duels would always cross the gangplank onto the asphalt wharf at the crack of dawn still chattering about how exhilarating the duel was.

Down to the wire yet again. The regulars would expound at their smokey-eyed escorts. Non, not just the wire. I swore the gamblers danced among the angels on the head of a pin, not that they could compare to you. How about I take you back tomorrow, to see how he eeks by yet again.

Fuckin’ rigged, lads. Slightly intoxicated first-timer bants with an equally intoxicated squad. Rigged to consummate Lord Vandelstam’s reputation. You can tell because he came out on top. Who comes out on top after that! That type of development occurs in every single fictitious gamble in the most gratuitous mainstream media. Cliché much. How’s about we come back tomorrow, and I’ll prove he’s a fraud.

They were right. It was rigged. Rigged to ensure the odds were never too far in any gambler’s favor. The seed for the probability equalization field originated from the Grecian Age of Gods, where the invention of bounded fields that isolated combatants from divine favor were necessary to ensure fair contests. Lucky streaks, Mystic Eyes of Luck, and even Marble Phantasm held no sway in the field. The gambler was left only with their skill to ride the waves of chance Lady Fortune provided.

“Ten”

“Seven. . .”

One couldn’t truly call this a game — only two transcendentals throwing dice.

To test whether the troll was worth taking the test, Van had pushed the formula to its extreme conclusion. Dead Apostles didn’t keep up with education standards, but he assumed most elementary students were capable of calculating the probability of a certain number appearing when throwing two dice. Snake eyes, the result of two single pips, was one out of thirty-six or roughly 2.8%. This did not mean that if two dice were rolled thirty-six times there would absolutely be one time when two pips appeared. The future was amorphous, ever-changing. A probability distribution only accurately predicted the aggregate, an infinite amount of trials. Yet, was magecraft not the slayer of common sense?

The version of the probability equalization field that Van had placed over the dice allowed for no deviation from the distribution. It took the uncertain, yet calculable future and pulled it into the present, stripping away all independence. Of course, this feat did not trespass into the realm of Magic, neither was it completely determinative, nor did it forcibly cluster probability. The order by which the numbers appeared was still in fortune’s domain. However, two pips would never appear more or less than once every thirty-six rolls of the dice.

“Five”

“Seven—!”

The thirty-sixth roll of the dice with both players having rolled eighteen times. The troll had not the faintest notion he had rolled the same number throughout the entire game.

Seven was indeed the most common number to be rolled when two dice were involved. According to the bounded field’s formula, there must be six sevens. The troll rolled eighteen. Eighteen sevens were beyond luck. Eighteen sevens were impossible.

“No Tag Ball. But Fun. Very!” Eyes glittering, the troll clapped his hands together. All the nervous energy that filled its brutish physique had melted away.

What Van witnessed was determinative precognition, a

Skill

supernatural power

that allowed the user to calculate the future based on present information. Vaguer. . . no, not divining the future, or rather not just that. More animalistic, instinctual as if the troll had naturally been reeling in the most probable result, seven each time. Reeling was a poor word, the troll was no angler, baiting then plucking out sinking fish, so the proper diction was bridg—

“You always did prefer polishing them yourself, Kishur. Couldn’t care less that you shattered ten for one with an acceptable cut.” Van wouldn’t kill this troll no matter how many cats it may have killed. “Let your Master know that I have no objections to his proposal. In fact, I wish you the best luck. . . Retch.” The name sparkled on Van’s tongue as foully as the degenerate champagne that was prepared for national superyacht events.

A slight shock ran through the Ancestor’s Magic Circuit. Ah, Katerina must have regenerated her head and subsequently lost it pounding on the bounded field around the underground workshop. He would need to settle her. Although new hires were easy enough to make, it was becoming more difficult to find competent subordinates among unfettered Apostles these days. Why back when the Crimson Moon looked down from the ramparts of the Millennium Castle. . . . He should have extended his blood to that magus. Enough reminiscing about the old days and lost old friends. After all, did not wishing this troll the best of luck set Van’s own last

bridge

attachment

alight?

The greatest gambles of all time were the ones never made. Too sacred. Too fragile. Something that could not be chanced or rather that one could not allow to be chanced. The further gone the Dead Apostle, the more she absconded from such a decision, deciding to find new cats and flatten their bones. Truly, a promising subordinate.

With a self-mocking smile, Van pushed the enchanted pair of dice across the counter and watched as the troll half reached out to snatch the dice before restraining himself with difficulty.

“A parting gift.”

The troll finally looked into Van’s eyes, for now he was unable to see Valery Fernand Vandelstam, the fourteenth Dead Apostle Ancestor, puppet master and Demon Lord of the Financial Sector. The troll could only see someone who had gifted him a pair of dice, so it smiled.

What a

horrifying

sincere

smile.

[You]

\ Zelretch. The troll —

(Ring Ring. Ring Ring.)

Wubba Lubba Dub Dub!

Excuse me?

Oh, it’s only you, Zelretch. Trying a new bit. It gets lonely down here.

A one-man act? Ever the fool.

I prefer comic, old friend. What’s the occasion this time? A time lock not quantized enough for your liking or just venting about sliders? I prefer mine smashed these days.

An apprentice of mine is graduating.

Graduating? As in a successor? Zelretch, are you finally going to retire on me and like take up surfing?

Hah, I’m old but not out, and he has a long way to go before succeeding me. Calling it graduation might be too peremptory, although “finishing summer coursework” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Summer homework? I’m curious. What do your apprentices write in their one-line diaries, or do you prefer to assign pictorial diaries? Apologies if I’m misremembering, old friend, but I thought all your apprentices were either dead, mad, or superposed between both states.

Aye. Only the troll, Retch, is left. He’ll be entering the Seventh Labyrinth soon.

To collect materials?

Ultimately.

Then, by all means. I wouldn’t dare get in the way of your apprentice and his summer homework. Only. . . Zelretch?

Yes?

I have some questions.

Shoot.

You sure? This money shot is going to make shooting the moon look as challenging as winning the third prize in a carnival game at the county fair.

[You]

2\ The Seventh Labyrinth of Alcatraz — 1st Floor

Retch sat in the middle of a magician’s workshop rubbing sticks. The workshop was slightly larger than Retch’s den under his bridge, but so crowded with ritualistic items, catalysts, and Mystic Codes that there was barely any room left for the troll to move about without bumping into one or two containers of pickled magical beast organs stacked atop the hardwood desk. In case the magician got hungry no doubt.

The abandoned stone alcove had been carved into one of the walls of the labyrinth as a supply depot to store ingredients gathered in the floors below. The main workshop, hidden below the fourth floor, was an altar built upon a fallen leyline strong enough to be considered a “path” further inside the World. If the land had been of lower quality, the labyrinth would not be capable of supporting the ecology that called it home and there wouldn’t be any lunch for Retch.

Anyone with sufficient magic could easily use fire elemental conversion to produce a fire and even if one didn’t have the ability there were alcohol burners aplenty. Zelretch’s apprentice had instead made a small impromptu fire pit with stones, acrid alchemical reagents, and dried monstrous plant material to cook the chimera meat he was skewering through sharp branches. The half bear, half pig had put up quite a fight, but the troll had succeeded in subduing and then strangling the life out of its beady eyes — Master did not allow him to own a weapon, only ritualistic implements.

“Don’t watch,” he rebuked the small figure on the other side of the fire pit.

Propped up against a rock lay a grotesque doll, her plastic doe eyes reflected the soft glow of magical lanterns hanging from the low ceiling. Instead of crafting a companion that mirrored the children it was created to delight, the designer had taken a baby’s face and exposed it to the sun until it wrinkled up like a raisin. The exaggerated, haggard features and tan skin tone were nothing compared to the neon green hair that had been partially hacked off. Retch hadn’t been the one to cut her hair, but he appreciated whoever did and then left her in the cafe trash for him to find. “Never fire when watch, Zel.”

As always, Zel refused to do the decent thing and look away. In the modern world, Zel was known as a Troll doll. When he first learned of the name, Retch was amazed. Zel didn’t look, smell, or feel like a troll. Yet everyone called this being a Troll, so it must be a troll! There were so many different trolls in the world. He wished he had attended that troll school he once read about in that story about mirror shards that got stuck in human eyes. After he had finished this assignment, perhaps he could ask Master to enroll him as an exchange student.

Retch persevered with the sticks. He had made fire this way many times, sometimes even with Zel watching. The sticks began to smoke and the phantasmal tinder quickly caught alight. When enough heat filled the room to thaw the cavernous chill from the troll’s bones, Retch gathered some scrolls from atop the desk and cast them into the flames. Good, parchment burned better than paper.

With the fire perfect for roasting, he stabbed the skewers into the dirt floor. Not too close to the flame, the meat would burn — slightly further away than one would expect. Chimera was tough as is, tenderizing it would require it to be cooked as long as possible.

The troll swallowed. The meat had begun to sizzle; the liquid fat that now coated the sizable chunks smelled like the sunbathing humans from this morning without the chemical coating. Perhaps the chimera had been half human, too. Half man, half bear, half pig. A silvery line of drool leaked from the edge of the troll’s mouth down his chin. He regretted not asking Lord Vandelstam for the meow meow corpse back. A light snack was better than having to wait.

“Dear Retch,” Zel always started with ‘Dear Retch,’ “you better thoughts.”

She was right as always, so the troll took out a pouch filled with seeds he had collected from the carnivorous magical plants he had used for kindling. After much clinking and rattling around the room, he began grinding the seeds into flour with a mortar and pestle.

“Dear Retch, see good number seeds.” Zel was not proud — there was a dangerous edge to her voice.

Like always, Retch was too involved in his work to hear the warning, so he blithely agreed.

“How many crystals, dear Retch?”

The troll instantly stopped grinding.

“Dear Retch—”

“Forgot, Zel. Retch forgot.”

The killing blow. “Retch not forget seeds.”

Because the seeds were for the playdate with Friend later. If Retch didn’t have the seeds he wouldn’t be able to play with Friend, so Retch could not forget the seeds. In truth, the chimera was something he crossed paths with as he was collecting seeds. The troll had completely forgotten about the homework Master had assigned him.

The troll gazed accusingly at his fellow Troll across the flames.

When Zel made him feel guilty like this, Retch wished he hadn’t thought of Zel, but it was too late. So that the Troll could think better than Retch, he had imagined Zel saying things that Master would say. There couldn’t be two Masters, so Retch had made Zel a complement to Master, as if she was his mate. Retch didn’t know too much about female blood drinkers except they smelled different from male ones and said “dear.” With that as the foundation, Zel, a female version of Master was born.

“Dear Retch, most important, graduate.”

Yes, Master had told Retch he needed to do better. Graduate. Master knew best. Graduating, like eating, was more important than playing. Playing was for fun — not life or death.

With a heavy sigh, the troll put aside the vessel of half-crushed seeds. He turned over the meat skewers so they wouldn’t be overcooked by the time he returned and with lumbering steps crossed the boundary line that protected the workshop from the dangers that lurked in belly of the labyrinth. Within the darkness that was slowly coating the troll, dozens of bright eyes flashed as rabid howls reverberated deeper and deeper. . .

||===========================||

When the furry mass of scale and feathers bounced against shattered dull crystals littering the floor and fell limp, the last chimera abandoned the corpses of its pack mates and slunk back into the safety of a side tunnel.

The empty dark labyrinth stank of a two-fold death. The first was a blanket that covered the natural world, a cruel equilibrium of life and detritus amplified a thousand-fold by moisture, warmth, and dank. Underneath the fishy odor of rotting fungi-covered walls and raw meat clinging to skeletons littering the packed dirt floor was a different death. The former Retch had intimately known from the first moments of consciousness, the latter he experienced the first time when he met Master. An over-ripe fruit with juices gushing out to stain the land crimson. Lord Vandelstam and his coffin stank of the same second death and so did this labyrinth. It would be difficult to establish if someone was dead or alive if they were encased in the stones that made up this labyrinth.

A good home for a cave troll. Retch, piqued to himself as he wiped the chimera blood from his hands onto his rawhide vest and bent down to pick up his pouch. Oh. . . Pity I’m not a cave troll.

They were closely related, maybe. Retch had always felt a kinship to stone. Perhaps that was why his bridge had been made of stone or was it the other way around? The circular thoughts made his head spin to the point he dropped the pouch and leaned on the wall for support. On the other side of the bridge, maybe being chosen as the chimera’s lunch had taken more out of him than he first thought.

His leathery fingers ran across the irregular invaginations that were too regular to be naturally occurring. These patches of wall had neither moss nor fungi growing on them. From their size and curvature, the holes had not been carved into the walls but carved out.

Stone golems were part of the labyrinth’s defense force. The remains of some crystal golems were strewn across the dirt floor. As he was going through those remains to collect the magic-filled cores, the chimera ambushed him. Well, he had done as Zel said. She couldn’t scold him for crushing and then processing the seeds anymore. But, why had the crystal golems been left in the labyrinth, but the stone golems removed? Probably magic; whenever Master was involved, so was magic.

Many people had tried to explain magic to Retch and he never understood what they meant, not because they used complicated words but because magic was not always magic. That didn’t make sense.

All this thinking made Retch more hungry. In fact, thinking about all this thinking caused his stomach to rumble. He picked up his pouch and began to return to his lunch in the small workshop.

||===========================||

The troll unceremoniously dropped the pouch beside the fire and took up the mortar full of seeds. As he began grinding once more, his stomach growled. The meat smelled good. Only half-done, but good.

Retch shook his head. Master said that half meant not done, and if Retch was ever in imaginary number space, he would need to know the difference between halves and dones. Retch nodded, but didn’t really understand what an imaginary number was — weren’t all numbers imaginary? No, he had to concentrate on the task at hand. After grinding the seeds into a fine flour he’d have to soak the flour in a viscous, slightly sweet-smelling liquid. It was clear so it definitely was not honey. He had tasted it before. Then, after decanting and filtering the liquid from the crushed seeds using a magical artifact that sucked out all the air in a bottle, Retch would need to fill a flask and place a long-stemmed contraption on top. After heating the liquid, he would be left with his very important magical oil. This time, Retch would make sure it was the best magical oil he could make. Friend would be impressed when they pla—

“Dear Retch, lots crystals gathered. Lots good?”

Oh no. He had forgotten about Zel. She was always like this, directly asking the questions he didn’t want to answer.

“No. . .” He said at last, shaking his head.

“Dear Retch, good number?”

Retch gingerly opened the pouch filled with glowing stones. Some vibrantly shone with life energy, others dully pulsed at scarce intervals. He quickly evaluated their worth, confirming the number he had settled on while collecting the doublet cores from crystal golems.

“Ten.”

“Dear Retch, total number?”

He hung his head, defeated. “Two-ten-eight.”

“Dear Retch, too lots. Why?”

Retch didn’t want to say, so he closed his mouth and looked away from Zel.

Dear Retch, why?

She was in his head, now. The question rebounded through the cavity, eating at him until he could no longer think about the lunch or the play date.

“Believe Master say some not good good.”

His shame spilled out from his lips. He had collected twenty-eight doublet crystal cores even though he knew only ten of them were of sufficient quality because maybe, just maybe, Master would find a few of them acceptable material for Retch’s homework.

“Dear Retch—”

“Know, Zel. Retch knows—!” His leathery hands wrung at his head.

Ten cores meant ten tries. Retch didn’t know if ten tries were enough. It hadn’t before. If ten tries truly weren’t enough, a part of him believed he would simply show Master the eighteen other stones he had brought, and maybe one or two of them were good enough, maybe—

No, it wasn’t. Zel was right, as always. He picked through the stones and flicked away the ones that were too dim. They arced, soft light traveling through but unable to pierce the gloomy darkness of the labyrinth before clattering uselessly against the wall or ground outside the boundary line. After he had thrown away all the cores that glowed too dimly, he turned the skewers so the cooked side faced him. He was hungry. Cooking took too long. He wanted to play. He needed to soak the flour. So many things. So many important things to—

“Dear Retch, most important graduate.”

Again. With Zel, it always came down to this, and then her expounding on all reasons why his life depended on his graduation. Half-listening, the troll’s hand unconsciously reached for a skewer and absentmindedly slid an irregular piece of meat into his mouth. The fragrant fat melted in his mouth while the slightly metallic juices coated his lips. Delicious. Half-cooked chimera, but it was still delicious. Master had told him to cook his meat. But it was delicious.

The moment he bit into the meat, Zel had stopped chattering, the pure pleasure of eating blocking her out. As he chewed, the small voice returned.

“Dear Retch, your timing mean graduate never,” she accused. “Hopeless, dear Retch.”

“Sorry,” he apologized, meaning every word, but then moved to the workbench to soak the flour. Oh, he couldn’t wait to play.

[You]

\ Zelretch — the troll. . .

I joked about your apprentice’s summer homework, but like what are you having him do? Recover an irreplaceable artifact like Indy but from a world about to be designated for pruning? Oversee a Grand Ritual to ensure the other Magicians don’t interfere? Clear the basement of the Magician’s Box of its cats?

Nothing of that nature. In the process, he is to craft a certain Mystic Code.

Mystic Code. . . your Jewel Sword?

Hah, I gave that as extra credit to someone else. This Mystic Code is more limited in application. Why, if I recall correctly, this very telephone we are communicating over was the prototype.

Are you sure a troll isn’t too fat-fingered to use a smartphone?

Talking to himself through a doll he found in the trash won’t get him anywhere. It would be good for him to have a guardian spirit and a Kaleidostick is useful for certain situations. In fact, I’ve been meaning to make a second one myself. I was thinking blue this time, perhaps a sapphire.

[You]

3\ Spirit Tomb Albion — Od Vena ⟶ Magisfair

Branches shot forth, restraining Retch’s trunk-like legs in their vice grip. He thrashed in a muffled fury, struggling until the cluster of branches pulled him off balance.

“Rah—”

His moan was cut short as the back of his head scraped against the hip-length grass that swallowed his body. Metallic and a hint of wyvern, it didn’t smell like the grass from the world above.

The branches retracted, a slender tendril impossibly lifting the troll’s large frame above the green sea of grass. A verdant canopy blocked the sparkle of the ceiling lights, but faint trails of green life energy illuminated the brush. The leaves reflected the unnatural, natural light that gave the branches an eerie cast. Where the forest beside his bridge was drowsy as if in a half-dreaming stupor. this forest was alert — a predator about to snap its maw.

After pulling Retch across the prairie for a short distance, the branches whipped up a storm, flinging the troll into its canopy, the verdant jaws snapping shut. Aged branches, shoots, and leaves — lignin teeth ground against leathery troll skin.

Trolls were too tough to chew and digest. That was why the trees in the world above enticed carrion eaters, fungi, and microbes to form dinner tables of shared interest. The trees in the underground kingdom on the other hand—

Annoyed, the draconic tree shot forth additional scaly branches. This time they were lances aimed to pierce flesh rather than restraining the prey. Retch twisted, but his physique was naturally built towards explosive strength rather than lithe gymnastics.

“GAaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—”

Left shoulder.

Right flank.

He writhed

Left forearm.

Right thigh.

He wept.

Trunk.

He wailed.

Five branches pierced through him, the tips visible on the other side of the troll’s impressive bulk. He had been skewered like the half-bear, half-pig chimera that tasted like half-human he had cooked for lunch. None of the wounds were fatal, but they held him in place to ensure the next branch would drain his heart-blood. These branches may not have belonged to a blood taking, disemboweling forest, but they did delight in flesh. With no way to wrest himself free, Retch smacked the branch piercing his right thigh hoping to snap it off. Though—

The branch trembled, but the troll’s neutered strength wasn’t enough to cleave through the scaly branch. Perhaps if he hit all the branches, the tree would instinctively retract them from his body, but Retch had neither the time nor the concentration to try.

A single branch shot from the trunk into the canopy. Rather than scales, this branch had interlocking ridges that extended as it traveled through the air. The sharpened point pulsed with glowing green life energy trails. Rather than a branch, it looked like a tailbone aimed directly at Retch’s chest.

—if one smack wasn’t enough; Retch would just hit the branch holding his thigh twice!

Half from exertion, half from the pain of pushing the branches deeper into his body, the troll yelped as he struck out with his bare first.

The scaly wood piercing his right thigh split.

Half from pain, half from the excess weight on one side, the remaining branches holding Retch up lurched and the fatal tailbone branch whistled past the troll into the canopy.

Before the tree could regain its composure, Retch severed the other branches with two strikes each. The scaly tree writhed, its appendages whipping its leaves into a green gale.

Without any support, Retch fell. Controlling one’s descent was basic magic and there was more than enough life energy in the underground for any magician. The troll tried magic-ing himself like he had been taught, failed, and landed onto the soft grass, howling as the stakes that remained in his body were hammered deeper in.

But Retch was strong, Retch was tough. A troll who was not either was a dead troll. With vitality that surpassed any human, he pushed himself off the grass and hobbled out of the forest before the draconic tree’s tendrils extended to pursue its escaped prey.

||===========================||

After crossing to the next junction, Retch dropped onto his knees, panting. Sweat dribbled down his back, some droplets caught in tufts of fuzz, the majority mixed with oozing dark blood that stained his animal hide jerkin— more a vest. Five lacerations. A troll shouldn’t worry about wounds that weren’t fatal. Retch worried the injuries might slow him down while playing ball. With that thought, Zel started murmuring about priorities, but she was in his pouch alongside a small bottle of oil and ten magical crystals so he ignored her.

Shifting his weight from his knees to his backside, Retch rested on the cracked wasteland littered with hills and gazed listlessly at the lights above, faintly winking and glinting. Not stars. There were neither stars nor moon in the underground world, only a ceiling magically manipulated from the glowing ant hill in the distance. Unlike any of the ant hills in the forest Retch called home, the magical ant-hill was too large to poke a stick through the top. The clay walls lifted the bulk of the settlement above the wasteland, serving as a platform. Unlike the mountains Retch lived in the shadow of, the sides did not connect to form a summit. The top was hollow and the inside gleamed like a mountain with a belly full of fire. Magic and games galore in that ant-hill, but they weren’t fun. They didn’t play ball the right way.

Grunting in distaste, Retch began to idly pick at the scaly stakes protruding from his leathery flesh. They annoyed him, so he pulled. White, hot pain flared as the branches loosened. No noise. Retch was a grown-up troll. Grown-up trolls gritted their teeth, bearing the pain quietly because predators always watched for signs of weakness. Especially in wastelands that seemed completely empty. In a forest teeming with life, a troll could rely on the predator of a predator to keep the initial predator in check. Being attacked in a wasteland meant flight or fight without hope for distraction, so until he pulled the last scaly branch out, Retch did not stop scanning his surroundings.

Nothing came; the hilly wasteland was truly devoid of predators.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Retch pushed himself off the dusty ground and examined his wounds. Although they were starting to close, they were the kind to open back up when he played ball. Retch didn’t want to make that mistake again. There was magic in the ant-hill. Magic meant healing, although magic also meant the inhabitants could see through the glamor. Underground humans were slightly more tolerant of non-humans. The dust from the wasteland surrounding the ant hill carried seeds of a parasitic plant. The seeds took root and germinated in human lungs, changing their appearance. The physicians might mistake him for an exotic case or an enhancement gone wrong.

Retch always ran away after being treated. This time, he would leave three of the scaly branches as payment, but that wasn’t nearly enough in the underground world. Maybe if he had kept more than ten crystals from the labyrinth. Zel was supposed to be the smart one! Remember for next time he visited on his way to play ball.

With the five branches that glistened with troll blood in hand, Retch began hobbling towards the ant hill. There were no trees, only drab shrubbery beside the dirty lakes and rivers spotted across the wasteland. Most arresting was the regularity to the hills, the ridges and the cracks in the earth resembled pores separating patches of scale. The underground world was the fusion between a dragon as large as a landmass and a gigantic lifeline capable of reaching inside the world. Of the multiple layers, the troll strolled through the top layer, the former dragon’s tailbone. As one traversed deeper into the corpse, the biomes randomly shifted. To find the forest, Retch sweated through a volcanic junction filled with boiling crystals and ran through a small tundra where acid rain dripped from the ground to the sky. On his return trip, he had passed from the forest straight to the tailbone. The only constant in the ever-shifting middle layer of the underground world was the scent of draconic life energy that stained everything, slightly realigning all the creatures that called this place home.

The scaly branches were one example. They were sold as spirit roots, although Retch was sure these were branches, not roots. Roots had fur. The branches did have spirits living inside of them, very pure spirits with a ground nature. That was the reason why a spirit root inserted into a rock came to life. The draconic tree had been something similar, a collection of spirit roots that formed a colony around a bone protrusion. Spirit roots were sometimes used in the underground world to replace lost limbs. Sometimes, because if the magic was a poor fit, the human turned into a tree. The roots were much more valuable above ground where they were ingredients. In fact, after evacuating the ground spirit, the branch would be a key component in completing Retch’s own homework. He would keep the second-best branch for his play date.

Cresting a cracked hill, Retch agonized over which of the branches was the second best. What did best actually mean? Best to hit, to look at, to bounce? Lost in thought, the troll almost didn’t hear the soft murmurs. The troll instinctively froze. His wounds flared at his sudden stop, the rippling shock causing his muscles to seize. Retch crumpled, tumbling down the hill until he was unceremoniously sprawled in the trough between two hills. Each wound stung as if he had plunged them in a hive of wasps. Two of them had reopened, oozing troll blood down his limbs, yet Retch clung onto the branches. He did not move. The troll lost himself in the fake stars glistening above, afraid he would disturb the long shadows on the next hill.

“The old Kuroe loved this scenery but longed for the real sky. That was why he was so happy when he first arrived in London—” Even a troll’s heightened senses could barely make out the raspy, laboring voice. “But he learned too late. A magus is a creature of betrayal, essentially a mass of ego. The bond between master and apprentice is not absolute. Give and take. A master values the apprentice as the next link that will contain their ideology and magecraft. The apprentice values the master as long as there is something to be absorbed. If either no longer matters to the other, there is no question the bond will be abandoned. I just never thought the Dean I would meet was myself.”

“Only a mass of ego would intoxicate himself with that kind of sentimentality.”

Retch knew eavesdropping was considered bad manners amongst humans, but he couldn’t help agreeing with the harsh, yet strangely kind voice. Was it not natural to yield to those stronger than oneself? Since they were stronger, they had the right to eat you. Retch remembered trying to eat Master the first time they met. His failure was the only reason why he obeyed Master.

“You and I met someone with the same goal. You and yourself. My king’s mother and me. That was luck. The shittest luck in the world. That woman might have been a harpy, but our relationship was too ideal. Compared to something like that, every relationship is a compromise — a betrayal. We were the exception, so there was nothing but chagrin when we faced the rule. Maybe, the greatest master teaches without imparting anything.”

The flat shadow replied with a cough and then agonized wheezing.

“Now you’re dying on me like this? Seriously, you are the worst Master. You know, I’ll disappear too.” The standing shadow shifted, lowering itself beside the flat shadow. Both shadows now faced the glowing ant hill, their backs to the troll who was still sprawled on his back, face up. “Still, that weak face of yours might be a good laugh after a drink.”

A cap was unscrewed and the mellow scent of moldy fruit left on the forest floor wafted through the false night.

“You first.” The silhouette of a flask was held out. “You promised.”

“Promised? Then. . . I can’t refuse now, can I?”

A dark hand extended the flask and very gently, poured some liquid into the flat shadow. Retch heard an audible gulp and a cough, then the flask returned to the lips of its owner.

“AAAAAHHHHHH—” The upright shadow exclaimed after taking a swig, the dark contours of a forearm wiping the edges of its shaded mouth. That good? Retch wanted some too! No, if he drank too much he would make sure to pass water before his play date. Retch shouldn’t intrude because Master hated it when someone intruded on his drinking.

“This wine has been the only good thing that’s happened to me ever since I met you.”

A small breeze blew through the cracked wasteland pulling the moisture from the nearby bodies of water. Eventually, a soft mist began to creep through the foothills before settling like a vaporous blanket.

The now even softer voice croaked, “I didn’t let Kuroe know who I was because I couldn’t trust him. . . me. I played him like anyone else. To be honest, even if Kuroe’s memory was clear to me, I always felt like it was someone else’s life. That. . . would make me a wraith driven by a past life, like—”

“Like me.”

The upright shadow inclines its head, “That’s why I felt at ease around you.”

“It’s not a bad feeling. Here we are at the end of the world, one that my King hasn’t seen. And, even if it was only for a short time, my dream of making my King a Divine Spirit came true. Next time when I’m summoned, I probably won’t remember any of this, but for now. . . even if you and I are wraiths no one will remember, our journey had meaning. There was meaning, Heartless.”

“Meaning for you and me. . . but what about the me who was already dead, he. . .”

Retch was unable to hear the reply. There was barely a trickle of life energy left in the flat shadow. What feeble current existed emptied through the hole where its heart should be. The upright shadow leaned down and the two shadows briefly fused.

“Good night, you who had forgotten your dream.”

Only the flat shadow remained, unmoving as the night fog crested and drowned the corpse in its milky embrace.

Unable to make out the glowing ant-hill, Retch panicked. Pushing himself off the ground, he slinked away into the fog bank clutching to his branches. He didn’t know if he was moving in the right direction, he needed to get to higher ground first. He desperately scaled hill after hill, trying to outrun the night fog. After the fourth hill, all his wounds had reopened. The pain, a surging storm at first, eventually ebbed to a dull persistent ache as he loped through the fog. To distract himself, the troll’s mind turned to the two shadows.

He wondered where they had been going. They must have been travelers going to play ball. Their journeys had been cut short. But for it to have had meaning? A journey did not have to mean anything. A journey was only moving from one place to another. For example, and this was always his example, Retch’s bridge. He had guarded the end of that bridge for as long as he could remember until one day, when he was looking at the far side he did not guard, he wondered why he didn’t guard the other side of the bridge?

No reason. No meaning. Just an idle thought a troll had.

Yet on that thought alone, Retch crossed his bridge. It was nothing special.

Everything changed that day. As a result, Retch met many people and traveled to many exotic places, but to the troll, it was nothing special, like crossing a bridge. There wasn’t any meaning in just being in a location.

That was why the troll did not understand the epiphany the two shadows came to. He stopped trying to understand and began to fantasize about all the ways he would play ball with Friend. Those thoughts were so enjoyable, so all-consuming that the wounded troll ran face first into one of the city’s clay walls.

[You]

\ Zelretch? The troll —

What’s a troll going to do with a Kaleidostick other than stick it up his own — but seriously, Zelretch? A troll?

Nothing too profound. You cannot approach this line of work without the innocence known as emptiness.

Idiotic. Even if you were to reach the Root like that, in an empty state you wouldn’t even be aware of it. There’s no point at all. Better to go all the way around and arrive at the back. That’s why it’s a magus’s nature to continuously reach for higher places even if it costs all human lives to jump clear of Earth.

That is indeed the nature of a magus.

Gah. Magus, Magician. Magecraft, the sunlight, and Magic, the sun itself. We’re both looking at the same source. Can’t look at it for too long before it’s bad for your eyes ~

With sunlight, you can raise crops, make fires, and see important things. What a useful thing, sunlight. The sun itself in your hands, though? The sun is only good for burning yourself to a crisp, and what good is a burned man? Magic is a different world with different rules. That is why the others went mad and I’m left with a troll. Do you understand?

That. . . wouldn’t happen if I was your apprentice. Lol ecks dee.

You’re too serious to pass that off as irony.

[You]

4 \ The Wandering Sea

Retch breached the water’s surface, his flailing leathery hands grasping for the rust-covered railings. The stale cavern air that now periodically filled his lungs tasted as sweet as if it had come from the heart of his forest. When he finally had a firm grip of the railing, his cramping tree-trunk legs that had not only been unceasingly kicking ice-cold ocean water during his swim, but also withstood excruciating sudden changes in pressure, relaxed. After a short rest, the dripping troll dragged himself onto the deck. If the kind humans who lived in the ant hill had not healed his wounds with magic, Retch would have had no hope of swimming through the sea. This wandering mountain range wasn’t a place that Retch could cross into. Master had said it was not part of the world. The bottommost layers of the underground world were also such places. Retch had arrived at the edge of the sea and looked up to find the largest waterfall he had ever seen. Luckily, today happened to be the one day in the year the gates that lived in the mountain range allowed visitors, so the currents had been reversed to allow for safe passage. As Retch pulled his dripping self onto the docks, he saw the pilgrims disembarking a motley array of human transportation.

Nice boats. Retch liked boats. Floating coffins were a different story. Boats were magical, especially big ones like these. Yes, some were covered in layers upon layers of magic resin, others had sigils carved into the wood, and there were a few made out of the bones of magical creatures, but boats held a magic beyond their magic. A boat floated on the water. The troll and his watertight pouch could also float on water, but he couldn’t float with five humans standing on top of him. You didn’t need a bridge if you had a nice boat. Why, Retch reckoned that if he had a boat, he could just ferry himself to his play date.

Those giant, armor-plated monstrosities with wind-catching clothes as limbs were awfully complicated. Wrestling one of them to submission might end up like the incident with the draconic tree, especially since most boats were made from wood. How many humans never made it home when they hunted boats? The troll shuddered at the thought; no matter how much he wanted to sail a boat for himself, he couldn’t afford more injuries this close to his play date.
By Retch’s reckoning, he had been the only one who swam into the Wandering Sea. There were too many dry robes and since he had arrived no one else broke through the surface of the water inside the cavernous dock.

The troll shook himself dry and followed after the robed figures filing out of the dock towards a dimly lit corridor. Unlike Retch, they all radiated magic. Each was an elite of the elite who, believing they had no more to learn from the outside world, made the pilgrimage to this wandering mountain range. His glamor may as well be a sparse screen of fronds to these magicians.

Not a single robed figure saw Retch, hanging at the back of the file.

The magicians only marched forward; those who pursued higher planes of existence did not look back. To look back at the temple gate was admitting uncertainty. True magicians could never admit uncertainty, no matter their scent.

Eventually, the procession of candidates left the twisting corridors and entered a high vaulted chamber. The robed figures in front of Retch halted and collectively gasped. The irregularity of the chamber gave the impression of a giant who had haphazardly scooped out the mountain’s innards. Only Retch, who had explored the Seventh Labyrinth of Alactraz that very morning, had the presence of mind to consider the architecture as well as a troll who had grown up in a forest could consider magical architecture. The robed candidates only considered the gates in front of winding staircases. Some trembled, others clenched their fists. Fear. Hope. Anticipation. Hate. The emotions were almost tangible, swirling together to coat the cavern, yet that oppression paled in comparison to the aura exuded from the doorways. Those made Retch feel as if he was in front of five Lord Vandelstams.

Lord Vandelstam was a nice enough blood taker who had taken the time to listen to Retch’s halting speech instead of outright dismissing him, so Retch wasn’t too sure what these figures were worried about.

Other than the troll, each magician had made the pilgrimage to the Wandering Sea on New Year’s Eve, the only day the mountain range was open to students who believed he or she was the child modernity had deserted. Each robed figure was sanctimoniously resigned to the fact that they were qualified above all others to be apprenticed. Hence, each waited for the locked gates to open before them and them alone. Because magic, because talent, because status, because luck, because —

None of the gates opened that year. Not because the supplicants were lacking compared to other years. . . no, perhaps the very fact they chose that year to aim for a place in the True Wandering Sea meant they were lacking, for what awaited them was no temple banquet, only a farce one might expect to find when attending the opera only to find a monologist.

Retch threw himself into the nearest corner and curled up into a ball, thick arms covering his head that was tucked between his knees.

The antechamber rocked as the ceiling exploded, boulders raining down.

A cacophony of confused screams assailed the troll’s clamped ears, but they were soon cut short with roared incantations. Those caught unaware by something as mundane as a cave-in had no place as an apprentice to the Wandering Sea.

Retch peeked out from the gap between his arms and saw unhooded figures raising daggers, wands, and other magical paraphernalia to shield themselves from the falling debris.

“Welcome Princess,” a voice boomed, echoing throughout the antechamber. “You’ve kept me waiting for an entire year. An entire year! If you had left me alone for one more day we could have made another fairytale together. I wouldn’t have minded. A good friend, interesting research, redefining eternity. It truly was. . . a year well spent. Alas —”

The massacre began.

Lightning arced from hundreds, no, thousands of formulae inscribed along the walls and ground, filling the antechamber with the crisp smell of summer thunderstorms. The brief roar of a stampede overwhelmed the roaring thunder that trailed after the bolts, then screams filled the air once more. Not gasps of surprise like when the debris fell, but sobbing pleas before guts were wrenched. Whoever came into contact with a bolt was seared, sizzled, and fried until they were too burnt for even the troll to stomach.

Some candidates protected themselves from an initial barrage or two, but the lightning bolts rebounded against the formulas inscribed on the wall that had manifested the lightning. The increasing number of bolts linked, forming chains of lightning that restrained and overpowered any defense like the coils of an ever-expanding serpent.

Retch stayed motionless. The lightning wouldn’t touch him as long as he was low. Lightning kissed tall trees, aiming for the shortest path to the ground. In this case, the lightning was magical so the shortest path was the highest concentration of magic.

The one with the most magic in this antechamber full of overcooked apprentices was —

White. Pure, unstainable, white.

Wordlessly, she had descended from a hole she made in the ceiling. Blonde hair, meow-meow like red eyes that were now liquid gold. A beautiful blood lover. Not like the blood guzzler who was beautiful according to human standards, but a blood lover’s beauty laid in her distance from humans.

Thus, she did not smell of death to Retch. She didn’t have a smell or rather, she smelled of everything, including Retch.

A blank face. A pure weapon, she gazed at the lightning that was now converging until it became a writhing, crackling serpent. The magic contained in the serpent was not only from the sum of the formulae, but also the lives of the crumbled-robed figures. Wreathed in the scent of violent desire, the lightning serpent opened its maw and —

She swung her claw. It was a simple motion, tracing a similar arc as Retch’s strike against the draconic tree. The similarities ended there. It lacked all the bestial desperation Retch’s fist had conveyed. It was a simple motion, nothing else.

Yet, the maw of lightning was spit in twain and an unfortunate stairway directly in the path of the attack was scooped out of the rock.

Fuuushhh —

Gales rushed to fill the stagnant tomb in the wake of her claw, but even nature herself could not compete with the peals of laughter that boomed throughout the antechamber. It was almost sad. The other magicians were dead and the beautiful blood lover paid no attention to the threatening mirth. If Retch hadn’t been present, there would have not been a person to appreciate how happy he sounded.

“An entire year’s stockpile. Even a continent’s worth of magical energy is too paltry for our dance, Princess. I confess, this is no Millennium Castle, but its corridors also await to be soaked in blood.”

Her crimson eyes narrowed.

Drawing her entire mental state from that slight shift in expression, “A shame, isn’t it? The first and last mystery of the world of magecraft, this shell is so aptly named. Where can I be? I must warn you though, Princess, although these anachronistic fools couldn't care less about what happens outside their gates, if you were to force entry, they may not be as welcoming as I. Though, I am curious to see how you compare to some of the Regressions from the Age of Gods in your current state. Choose wisely, Princess. I’ve waited an entire year with bated breath. Don’t you dare disappoint me.”

The corridors at the wings of the antechamber crackled with lightning once more. No longer the pure magical lightning that the white blood lover dispersed, but cursed, tinged with the deathly corrosion of a blood taker who had been formerly human.

Golden eyes ablaze, she turned towards one corridor that was filled with hisses that drowned out howls from candidates who managed to run away from the initial storm and —

For less than a second, her gaze turned towards the troll, still huddled in his corner. A... not familiarity, but acknowledgment passed across that inhumanly blank face before evaporating as she plunged into the cursed lightning like a salmon dashing itself against foamy rapids.

Only screams echoing from the corridors resounded in the otherwise empty antechamber. The troll pushed himself off the stone floor towards the charred body closest to him. No good, everything melted. Next. In the pocket of the next body which had been burned beyond recognition was an intact dagger with a red gem inlaid at bottom of the hilt and AZOTH carved into the blade. Perfect.

Retch took out the second-best branch from the draconic tree and the jar of seed oil he had extracted from the plants in the Seventh Labyrinth. Placing the jar of oil beside him, he began whittling the branch. Scaly spirit root was especially difficult to work. It was so strongly magical that normal tools couldn’t cut into the materials. Magical tools like this dagger were necessary.

As minutes passed and a small pile of shavings stacked up next to the troll, the dagger’s edge dulled. When there was no longer any magic left in the dagger, the blade snapped upon striking the branch.

Retch grunted. The work was far from satisfactory and the promised play date too soon. Luckily there was an abundance of daggers with the word AZOTH carved on them in the antechamber. Collecting blade after blade from corpse after corpse, the troll whittled the branch until he was satisfied with the shape. Then, ripping a piece of slightly scorched robe from the corpse next to him and dipping it into the magical oil he had prepared earlier that day, the troll wiped the rudimentary club. Almost finished. Almost time. Almost play.

“Dear Retch,” came Zel’s voice in his head. “Forgot work.”

“Finish later. Play soon. Finish later,” he grunted petulantly.

“No later. Master —”

Master would be disappointed and Master could kill Retch. The troll knew he should put down the oiled rag to look for more daggers he could use to carve the best branch into a wand, like Master wanted. There were no more daggers in the antechamber, but the corridors were now as empty as the antechamber. The last screams had long died out and the cursed lightning had fizzled itself to nothing. For now, the troll paid Zel’s instances, his own fear, and the eerie silence no mind. As he oiled his club what thrummed in his head was the steady beat of two words.

[You]

\Zelretch! The troll —

Seriousness? When has that mattered to a magus, Zelretch?! The troll. . . a troll. Answer me, why would you choose a troll to be your apprentice?!

I didn’t choose him. I found him near a bridge, his bridge to be exact.

You. . . so that’s the game you’ve selected. The descendants of the Jotunn that have become steeped in fairytales. Is he false fae? No, the original Nordic factor is enough if you cultivate it properly. Trolls live under bridges because rivers, large bodies of water are places of transition, but you’re having him move beyond that, aren’t you? The kaleidoscopic bridge of Norse myth, the Bifrost, a path between Heaven and Earth, world to world, and like the Jotunn to Ragnarok, he shall traverse it to invade the realm of the gods. With that, your troll apprentice steps into the domain of the Second Magic.

What? Oh, hmmm. I’ve never thought about it like that before. No. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s a nice little theory, but simply that, a theory. The reality is much simpler. I made Retch my apprentice because he chose to cross his bridge. It’s an event as simple as tripping over a r — Hmmm, I’m too liberal with that expression. He crossed a bridge.

Anyone can cross a bridge. Some will even pay the troll toll to steal boys' souls.

Not a bridge troll. A bridge troll lives under the bridge. As you said, large bodies of water are places of power, portals to other worlds before the paradigm shift. A troll may watch others cross the bridge and even stop them from crossing, but they do not cross them.

All nonsense. You hypnotize a troll, put him under your control, then order it to cross a bridge. The result is the same.

The difference is knowing you have crossed a bridge so you can cross any bridge. As a surly, goof-up of a student of mine used to say “The state I am trying to reach is one where I am no longer defined by the boundaries of my self. By being free of everything — I become everything.”

He believed he could, so he did. Buzzwords.

He did so he no longer needs to believe, he only does.

Slide.

Now, there’s a good joke. If he could move between parallel worlds, why, I would actually be making a troll my successor.

Ahah — Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhhahsdshaka khahahahsjjakhahahahahh.

What’s so funny?

If adjacent movement is all that’s required to be your successor, then you have found him, Kishur Zelretch Schweinorg, Magician of the Second Magic.

You? You’re even less suited to be my successor than a troll, Flat.

. . . You. . . when did you figure out I wasn’t —

“Wubba Lubba Dub Dub?” If you were impersonating Caubac, you were doing a poor job of it.

The patterns. The signal. The magical energy wavelength. It was all perfect, so — No, you’re lying. You must be ly —

Did I ever once call you Caubac? Did I ever once call you my friend?

But my jokes —

True, many supplements that describe our kind have oft-stated, both ironically and not, that “the 27th Dead Apostle Ancestor Caubac Alcatraz’s, the Millenium Lock’s true power, is his comedy.” Your first mistake was assuming he acted the same around me as he does around his waitresses. We’re friends. Our friendship has moved past the need for jokes. You could not understand what it meant to be or have a friend, Flat.

You called me to ask for my permission to let your troll into the Seventh Labyrinth!

I called to let you know my apprentice was on his way to the Seventh Labyrinth. I did not ask your permission as it was not your permission to give. I only called out of courtesy.

Courtesy?

Not for you. It was the same reason I requested Retch to introduce himself to Van.

Van. . . Van-Fem? You’re lying. Whatever, it doesn’t matter anymore. Humanity may be heavy enough in this world but it's too distorted, too polluted by your kind, for my purpose. I’m leaving. You want a successor? I’ll have you know in a few moments, I’ll be breaking through the wall between worlds. The Counter Force itself couldn’t stop me! Do you have the jewels to try, old man?

Me? Oh no, I have too much respect for the one who created you to attempt such nonsense. Dealing with you is the perfect summer homework for a promising student. In fact, I believe he should be arriving soon.

Your troll apprentice? Now you’re the one joking. You don’t even know where I am and soon? Hah, the ICBMeow Muscle Cannon is already ready to fi—

Meo—

Shut up! E-Even if you know where I am, your troll has no way to get here from the Seventh Labyrinth without The Second. The entrance in the Magician’s Box’s basement has long been torn out. Only the doorknob remains.

Retch cannot Slide, but he is capable of moving through the timeline. You said so yourself, trolls are guardians of places of transition. He naturally symbolizes not only the gaps but also the bridges that connect them. Unlike other trolls, he traverses the canal with the stream of time flowing underneath. It’s been a while, but I believe the nomenclature I came up with was Transverseflow/Incidental Bridge.

The Counter Force or the tendency of the timeline to maintain itself would wipe out such a contradiction.

If you told a normal person about a formula would the mystery decline?

Not in the short term because he’s incapable of using it. Yes, in the long term because he would eventually tell someone else.

A normal person is capable of choosing the topic depending on the person.

That type of empty person does not exist, so it’s all nonsense. I’m not even paying attention to that argument.

Maybe. I will concede that my apprentice, Retch, is no such being, but there is a certain emptiness to him, or should I say purity. He is incapable of threatening the integrity of a timeline. At most he’d eat a cat or two, but a few lives won’t snap a band.

And you think such a per — thing is capable of stopping me?

Stopping you? Only the guilty would think they need to be stopped. What do you believe you are guilty of, Flat? No, my apprentice has no intentions of stopping you; he only wants to play with you. In fact, I think he’s been looking forward to it all day.

[You]

5 \ Great Cat’s Village (Anime Footsies)

Cursing, Flat Escardos slammed the cerulean handset into the base unit. The vehement motion caused the single-legged round table to wobble, which sent the nearby cat spirits squawking in protest. Some dropped building materials, others the mackerel frames they were snacking on.

“Fire up the Hollow Capillaris!” Flat barked at the flustered cats. “Time to hasta la vista out of this litter box.”

The cats that cautiously began to bend down and pick up whatever they dropped turned to stare at him with a ‘Bur~nya.’

“Now—!” He roared, throwing his chair aside.

“Nyaa~yah~!” Miniskirts aflutter, the humanoid cats took off across the pink cobbled road towards a distant stone pillar.

Those annoyances out of his mind, the magus flattened his collar, fixed his smile, and stepped away from the old-fashioned telephone he had stolen from the Clock Tower’s

Brishisan

Faculty of Lore

. Dismantling the bounded fields around the vault that held the priceless Mystic Code had taken time, resources, and effort, but the reward was worth the immeasurable risk.

Flat was leaving the

branch

timeline

. He had outwitted the World itself, so there was only one person left who was a remote threat —

The Old Man of Jewels

Old Man Time

.

Hacking a direct line to the void the old man worked from and redirecting all the

old man’s

Magician’s

correspondences to himself, Flat had been sure, sure he could preempt any of the

Dead Apostle Ancestor’s

Magician’s

machinations.

Dead Apostle Ancestor. . . . Beneath his permanent smile, Flat gritted his teeth. Van-Fem had betrayed him again. No, not betrayed; there had never been a mentor-mentee contract. Only, the pain that clutched Flat's stomach ached like betrayal. He always turned to the Dead Apostle gambler and his floating Casa whenever his parents felt the urge to measure their mystère. It was part of a magus’ nature to betray; in that respect, Van Fem was as trivial as his parent’s misguided belief that successful filicide was the terminus of Escardos magecraft. So trivial he cast

Van Fem

that baseball card reprint

from the plane of his mind.

Flat had long stopped counting the number of things that tried to kill him. First, it had been his parents believing killing him was the forgotten Grand Order of the Escardos family, then it had been his teachers because he said things like that there were times it was easier to project one thing than reinforce another, and finally the World itself for simply existing. Only the last one almost succeeded.

He had fallen into the base of the World, a dead-end similar to purgatory known to the cat spirit inhabitants as the Great Cat’s Camp. Conceptually isolated, Flat ate canned cat food and drank tea out of paw print mugs with a feline film crew. After an unspecified amount of time, he concluded he was cut off from the tree of time, perhaps all trees of time.

The campground was not truly physically isolated; cars drove by the campground on their way to the nearby beach. However, the drivers and passengers were unable to see him no matter what magecraft he used. Any who lacked the presence of mind and attempted to enter the permanently closed camp were forcibly ejected. The cat spirits who were perpetually in the middle of their principal photography had unwittingly served as his

cat-pors

captors

, yet they had also been instrumental in his escape to the only location linked to the camp — The Great Cat’s Village.

In the Great Cat’s Village that was both everywhere and nowhere in the World, among the fish bones and candy gravestones were fragments of a

Spiritron Arithmetic Unit

photonic crystal

. When Flat asked the cat spirits where the fragment had come from, he got nothing but vague complaints about him being a

Type-Zoomer

type of zoomer

who never listened to anniversary drama CDs, because if he did, he would know all about the fabled

Pharble Mantasm

delusion manifestation equipment

a Dead Apostle created.

The villagers could make as many cat puns and record Nirvana covers as they pleased; that photonic crystal was hope for Flat who had never lost anything because he did not have anything to lose in the first place. In earnest, the magus began planning his escape to a better world. A world where he could fulfill

its

his

purpose.

To avoid the World’s ongoing

attentions

encroaching forced isolation

, Flat secreted himself in locations where the Human Order was weak and began to put his plan into action.

In the Seventh Labyrinth of Alcatraz, Flat repurposed the

comedian’s

Ancestor’s

stone golems that were saturated with his

Principle

curse

into a

cat box

Klein Coffin

.

In the Spirit Tomb, Flat studied the remnant of

Albion’s

the last pure dragon’s

Magical Energy Core during his stay at Magisfair, using it as a blueprint to construct the

Hollow Capillaris

small-scale magical energy accelerator

.

One New Year's Eve, after a contract with the nameless Captain of a cursed smuggling ship went sour, Flat infiltrated the Wandering Sea, striding past a gaggle of wide-eyed wannabe apprentices loitering in front of a shut

Guénon

Gate of Preservation

and pushed open

Fushiruka

the Gate of Subordination

. Amidst the tumult of the annual apprentice

selection

rejection

process, the only successful applicant had managed — no, triumphed in wresting the

booster

trump card

that would keep his body safe as he passed through the wall between worlds.

Back at the Great Cat’s Village, Flat herded the cats and forced them to work on the pillar he now stroked with a trembling hand. The

Klein Coffin

cat box

was not the end of a telescope to gaze upon the kaleidoscopic jeweled sky, but the barrel of a battery to blast through the weakest point in the barrier between worlds. This was the purpose of his ICBMeow Muscle Cannon.

Barely able to contain his anticipation, “Status?”

The cat spirit wearing a hardhat looked up from his clipboard. “N-Nyo problem, boss. The Elites assured me it’s out of this world, ni ye ye naaa~”

“Good.” Flat’s smile never faded. “I hate the stench of dead cat.”

The cat spirit’s face paled. Its bulbous eyes, too large for its face, darted back down to the forms on the clipboard. Calling those fish-shaped scribbles on paw print stationary forms was too kind. Hastily, the cat spirit took out a metallic rectangle from underneath the clipboard and handed it to Flat.

“Better than anyathing you could scavenge from a back alley, boss.”

A touch screen tablet with a paw print engraved on the back — the control terminal for the ICBMeowMuscle Cannon’s photonic core. The core not only controlled the

cat box

Klein Coffin

and the

Hollow Capillaris

magical energy accelerator

but was also responsible for navigation. While Flat had been programming a guidance system into the

core

Spiritron Arithmetic Unit

, he whimsically installed an anti-modding DRM trap that would convert the cannon into a giant mechanical cat spirit modeled after the one that smoked. That sure scared the cat spirits carving the barrel out of dismantled stone golems the first time it activated. Took three tries to get it right. Flat was no Atlas Alchemist and the materials he had access to were

dirt cheap

kitty-litter

, but he had managed. He always managed. That was why—

Heavy footsteps and a guttural,

“Friend! Friend! Retch Play!”

||===========================||

Apprentice to that old man or not, no seven-foot, leathery troll whose squat, slug-like face was missing an ear was going to impede his Magnum Opus. And how could he? Senile old fool, the troll didn’t have enough magical energy to activate most formulae worth compiling. That slug of a troll was so lacking that Flat almost missed the abnormality. It wasn’t enough to loosen Flat’s smile, but the foreign element almost felt. . . familiar. It wasn’t the club made of Albion spirit root absently swung over a misshapen shoulder; there was something rotten underneath the disgusting dead cat smell that clung to the troll’s rags.

Flat wrinkled his nose without disturbing the smile still spread across his face and barked,

“Umbral Return Kyat—!”

Dropping whatever they held, his feline sweatshop turned to meet his gaze. Normal cats only sweated through their paws; these were soaked from ear to riding boots.

“Dori~ dori~ dori~ dori ~”

Less than a second later, pink dust clouds from small burrows were the only trace of the cat spirits.

“Friend!” The sluggish troll shouted from across the now-empty village. “Pla—”

Smiling amiably in reply, Flat placed a palm to the ground and—

“

Game Select

Interference Start

.”

—promptly activated all the

traps

spell formulae

he had prepared.

Formulae etched into the

pancake cobble

ground

.

Formulae scrawled on the

gingerbread huts

ceiling

.

Formulae inscribed on the

gravestone name plates

pink

.

Silences of gales, cataracts of flame, blizzards of light, murders of darkness, hatreds of curses, fields of bound, magecraft upon magecraft aggregated to form an accelerating torrent of magical energy that raged through the village, subsuming then tearing the village apart along with anything that was foolish enough to reside within.

“fAAAghhh —”

Of course, it hurt. The deluge of magical energy tore Flat’s body apart. Naturally. He did not know a single person who had circulated so much. Maintain it. Pain only existed in the mind. The body was the engine and the engine would only be cut when he decided.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Once called breathtaking, his high-grade Magic Circuits, thin capillaries capable of delivering magical energy to his entire body, began to rupture, unable to take the pressure that thousands of simultaneous formulae demanded.

Bruise and burst

Boom and bust

.

Bruise and burst

Boom and bust

.

Calf-high pants and shirt sleeves were covered in blood, yet the blessed cursed child continued to smile upon what his work wrought.

The irregular craters strewn throughout the flattened village were devoid of debris. The pink ground was charred like a non-stick skillet with all three layers of Teflon burned off. Lamp post and tree were not only indistinguishable — neither existed. The destruction was absolute, similar to a bombing run in one of those war movies Flat tolerated. When the dust cleared, there would be not even an iota of the slug of a troll left, and finally Flat could enter the ICBMeowMuscle Cannon towering behind him.

“

Game Ov—

Observation Com—

”

“Good magic. Friend!”

Flat didn’t need to reinforce his eyes to identify the shadow wrapped in pink soot. Rotating his remaining uninjured Magic Circuits and compressing the

od

Lesser Source

as quickly as possible, he reinforced the soles of his shoes and almost instantly closed the gap.

“What—” Flat called out in spite of himself, venom coating his voice. “What apprentice of— scratch that, how could someone who lives in our world not know the simple difference—!”

Cut the momentum from the sprint in mid-air. Expand and then recirculate the magical energy into the wrists. While sustaining an afterburn gradient, correct for the impulsive differential to push off the ground with as much explosive force as if you were bouncing off ring ropes. Recompress then pivot the magical energy through with circuit tracks 7, 16, and 14 to the soles of the feet. Compile and then complete all processes in less than two seconds.

“YyyYaaaAAAAaaaahhHHHHhh—”

—A drop kick.

Master of hand-to-hand combat, Flat Escardos played his opening

foot

hand

in this battle of magecraft. If his previous barrage had been excessive in its magical energy output, this certain kill move exercised an excessive amount of physical force. No matter what raw physical defenses the troll could bring to bear, Flat’s foot would tear the troll’s head from its almost non-existent neck.

“—Play! Friend! Play! Play! Play!”

An overhead swing.

KraaaaeeEEeeeEEEehehhhhhhhhhhhhh

The alien screeching of loafers that had been reinforced until they could swat away a round fired from a magnum colliding against oiled draconic spirit root that had the momentum of a boulder tumbling down a waterfall rang through the razed village.

How? The troll certainly survived the traps, but that much concentrated magical energy should have rendered it barely able to move, let alone capable of swinging with such force. True, the mystère in high-quality spirit roots from Albion was considerable, but those roots were used as an ingredient or as a catalyst. To wield one as a club was nonsense! Maybe. . . it was a Mystic Code, but making a force-amplifying Mystic Code was beyond this sluggish troll. Zelretch! The troll— seriously, you chose a troll that uses a spirit root as a club as your apprentice?! Stupid. Stupid old man—

Flat was close enough to the troll that the odor of dead cats was overwhelming. He didn’t care. He had failed; the troll was unharmed. Even that apprentice within

Fushiruka

the Gate of Subordination

who Flat thought had brushed against the Regression from the Age of Gods wouldn’t have survived the formulae Flat let loose without restraint. This troll surviving without so much as a burn was a joke, a sick joke that would be momentarily rectified.

Still hanging in midair, Flat stretched a hand towards the dusty pink ground, accelerating himself towards the earth with a cord of Attraction while using the flat of the troll’s club as a springboard to backflip back to neutral. The magus didn’t waste any time on landing, pelting the troll with a relentless barrage of jabs as he corrected his positioning.

Up, down, left, right, Flat wove in, out, and around the sluggish troll, dancing across the seared ground for mere moments before falling into the air to connect blow after blow with lithe acrobatic grace.

In his youth, he had been worse than terrible at close combat.

Your multitude of Magic Circuits may give you the raw strength to match most magi, but your hand-to-hand combat ability is actually negative, those who assessed him had asserted.

He knew there was nothing he could do about it; it was the cost of a body others considered excessively mystically gifted. Flat kept smiling. Flat kept smiling so he tempered his body until it matched those who mastered reinforcing their bodies. That was why Flat knew, this troll, this apprentice had no training, no skill, no talent — only raw strength. The same raw strength a younger Flat turned his back on.

“Ball—!”

Yet

“Waiting”

This

“Hard—!”

Troll

“Friend—!”

Was

“Play”

Matching.

“Time—!”

Him.

The combatants made a circuit through and around the husk of the village, foot parrying spirit root, fist slapping spirit root, head butting spirit root. Neither gave a meter. Neither smile, inane glee or curated assuagement dropped. Completely equal, it made no sense. Flat’s reinforced limbs continuously struck out toward the troll’s numerous openings with all the force his mystically stored momentum would allow. It should be enough. This should be more than enough for a slug of a troll. If it wasn’t then there was something missing. Something Flat could only see if he shifted his thinking up a

plane

gear

, aiming for the level of

melodrama

abstraction

it preferred.

Rush down play that focused on heavy pressure. The opening setups from neutral like his ‘Supersonic Spiraling Drop-Kick Fortissimo ~’ were explosively abrupt enough to force any opponent into block. The subsequent string baited the opponent into facing an ambiguous crossup. Which way? It didn’t matter, whatever direction the opponent chose, Flat’s acrobatics that allowed him to endlessly

Roman Cancel

ideally cancel

made sure it was the wrong one. Then after the hit confirm— there was no after. But,

“Play! No!”

—A two-handed swing of the club with a hitbox that covered at least a quarter of the screen forced Flat to jerk his limbs back lest they be crushed.

“Ball! Friend!”

That swing. That simple swing with nothing behind it but brute force just didn’t make sense! There was no magical energy, causality was in no way affected, and it certainly wasn’t a fragment of the

Kaleidoscope

Second Magic

in motion. The troll just swung that curved club of carved spirit wood, well. So maddening, well. A swing with no startup frames, could block

three ways

low, mid, and overhead

, was a shield and could be canceled into itself plus frames was—

No. That foul-smelling, single-eared, squat-faced slug was only a troll. Flat’s real strength lay in mid-range combat, repeatedly casting spells to turn any crossup into a four-way mixup, so perhaps. . .

The same wide overhead swing. Flat danced away, the tip of the club missing the tip of his nose by a hair. What failure couldn’t extend the length of spirit root?

The magus raised an arm and the circulating magical energy was condensed in less than a second. Now, his incantatio—

The raised spirit root club was already descending like the jaws of a beast around the neck of its prey. That swing would crush him before he was capable of casting even a

Single Action

One Step

.

Flat clenched his right fist with all the force he could muster, the dried, black blood cracking as it flaked off. Without any other option, he expelled the accelerating magical energy in one burst to protect his fist and redirect the swing.

He hated that the troll smiled as his club impotently traveled through thin air. Too stupid. Too lacking. The slug had no idea he failed. Failure was not something to smile about; that was why Flat smiled.

“Hey. Hey, I’m going to wipe the smile off your face.”

An affable smile fixed on his lips, the magus began circulating as much

od

Lesser Source

while exchanging it for as much

mana

Greater Source

as his damaged body would allow to create a magical

closed loop

vortex

. Hit me. This wasn’t a game of tag, so hit me. I’ll take your blow then wipe you off this timeline. As long as the troll fell, the magus would exhaust everything he had short of his own life to—

“Good magic. Friend.”

Spirit root club resting at his side, the troll vigorously nodded.

Magic Circuits rotating to fill him with everything he hated but also everything he could be, Flat paid the troll who didn’t even know the difference between Magic and Magecraft no attention. At first.

A terrible premonition shot through the magus’ body. The shiver that accompanied it accelerated through him faster than magical energy condensed to its limit. If the troll survived the spells that had destroyed the cat spirit village, then why would anything Flat cast be effective? More importantly, how did a troll have so much resistance to magecraft?

Nullification as a greater mystère? Trolls were a phantasmal species, but they were too far diverged from their Jotunn forebears to be that resistant to modern magecraft.

Throwing out an equal amount of magical energy? Impossible with that amount of

od

Lesser Source

.

A Mystic Code could — not the oiled club by his side — the faint but nostalgic magical energy Flat sensed when he first laid eyes on the slug. What was it? What was it that he tossed overboard? Nothing important. Worthless trivial things. What was important was that the troll had an unknown Mystic Code, otherwise. . . there was no way a sluggish troll could dodge every one of the thousands of

traps

externalized arrays

Flat had spent years preparing. Perhaps, no, that was impossible, but perhaps, no, but perhaps. . . this troll with only one ear, a club for a weapon, dressed in a hide vest, and stinking of dead cat truly was Zelretch’s app—

You can no longer—

A troll has all the reason in the world to guard the bridge, but no reason to cross.

Sophistry, old man. You or at least whatever a “Kaleidostick” was, was involved — must be involved. To ask this troll for an explanation was to admit. . . Admit what exactly? Flat was leaving. All bridges were just lengths of fuse for his cannon.

Without a twitch to his smile, “Thanks, I love being complimented. Just between us, I made sure it’s not like red wire, blue wire. All the wires are black. How did you do it, slug?”

“Not boom good, Retch hard smile.”

The troll nodded. Darkened by the shadow of the towering barrel, his expression was difficult to read. Although, what useful information could one glean from the expression of a slug anyway?

Wait, how had Flat been this distracted? Make sure to pay attention to your surroundings because it might be trying to tell you something. That was the first lesson his parent’s assassins had taught him.

Instead of protecting his ticket out of this deadbeat world, Flat was facing it.

“Friend smile. Is. Good magic.”

Too permanent, too practiced. As long as he did not let it drop he could still continue. Continue loving

others

magecraft

. As long as the smile never quivered, a human life weighed more than the world. His was the complexion gained when standing alone, gazing at endless

circuits crossing

networks

.

And Zelretch, Zelretch! Your troll. . . this slug of a troll—

The troll. The troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll. Troll.

The troll dared— !

“

Play Ba—

Intervention Star—

”

Flat never finished his

count

incantation

. Like a gale, the troll propelled himself backward. In retreat, no, into position right in front of the cannon.

A

empty lane

bridge

separated the troll from Flat.

No need to measure the distance. It was eighteen point four meters or more colloquially, sixty and six. Therefore, it could not be an oiled, bent club that the slug of a troll raised to pierce the nonexistent sky. Yes, an archaic failure of a design that no sane person would ever allow themselves to hit with, but not a club. The troll had never been holding a club.

With idiotically unadulterated, hatefully sweet, disgustingly naive, manically deprived, soaring glee, the troll shouted,

“PLAY BALL—!”

It had always been a bat.

[You]

6 / Great Cat’s Village (Ball Game)

Racing may be Monaco’s national sport and most of the children, inspired by the European superstars who summered in the country to evade income tax, preferred football, but on the rare summer afternoon the thermostat read over thirty and the ocean breeze faltered — caps on, bats out.

An idyllic sentiment, but organizing nine-on-nine was too much to ask for a neighborhood’s worth of scrappy kids, let alone the privileged youths brought up in the luxury capital of the world. Only the few who thought themselves more mature than the ingratitude demanded to be catcher, and let’s be honest, fielding was the worst position ever, on base or left alone in the outfield.

Under the cerulean Riviera sky, ambling innings were quickly cast aside and sport devolved into

gladiator duels

hero versus hero

. Calling children who didn’t know the proper rules for baseball “heroes” was a stretch, but as long as they stood atop the impromptu mound or to attention at the batter’s box, they were undeniably the main characters in their little hearts, benchwarmers be damned to self-insert.

The rules of the duel were simple. One hit vs. one out. A lowly sports game like penalty shoot-out, horse, or four square. Call it unpolished. Call it pure. To those obnoxious moneyed youths, their game was as much of a duel as playing cards while riding on their parents’ motorcycles.

The kids in Monaco called it “ball,” but the game had no official name, or rather, every time a kid with a bat met a kid with a ball, a new name was born. So of course, the nameless convergent regression that seemed to possess even trolls would arrive at a village of cat spirits that was both nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

No balls. No Rosin. No mound.

With magecraft, no problem. As long as the pitcher could see the batter, it was baseball. A different type of contest than tag, baseball was as much information warfare as it depended on the duelist’s physical abilities. Flat had never been invited to play with the other children, but he had watched with it, so he knew that—

Two feet rooted on the ground like stumps. Rear arm flared up. A death-grip around the bat with knuckles unaligned.

Terrible form.

Slug

Troll

couldn’t hit.

Yet, those beady eyes burned. Not with a challenge. There was none of the enmity that had progressively darkened Flat’s parents’ eyes as each year passed. Only. . . it was a trivial thing, but there was a saying in an obscure school of archery practiced in a backwater eastern country: the arrow was not shot at the target, but at the mind of the archer. Like magecraft, the goal of the martial art Kyudou was to kill the ego. Spinning the eight stages — the bow, arrow, and target only served as the bridge to a mentality where, like the old man had blustered, one was free of anything to become everything. In that case, no matter how terrible his form might be, as long as he imagined it, the troll would hit.

“Ready. Friend?”

Such halting enunciation was grating. Such a dopey smile was offensive. Ridding himself of all sentiment and hoping to reach the result? Nonsense. Judging from the odor, this slug couldn’t even reach the bathroom.

“You don’t have friends.”

Spittle flew from Flat’s smiling lips, wetting a heap of ashen dregs. No doubt, the remains of a cat’s former candy house. The pitchers on the widescreens at Van Fem's Casa launched chewing tobacco, but here, the

sentiment

ritual

alone was enough.

The bloody body twisted as the bruised right arm was pulled back, capillary-like Magic Circuits creaking as they spun, circulating

Od

the Lesser Source

.

Without experience. Without talent. Without training.

As long as the cost was paid and the

circuit

engine

continued to spin, a magus could reach any

destination

result

. This was the domain that the troll could never reach, no matter what a senile old man said.

Life coursed through the magus as he gazed beyond his opponent towards his towering triumph.

— He didn’t belong here.

Death trailed behind, encircling the magus as he assembled the necessary formulae.

— He didn’t belong.

Such vapid anticipation. Don’t look at me like that. Like this could possibly be “fun.” It ate at Flat more than his right arm throbbing in cosmic contortions.

— This

slug

troll

doesn’t belong in front of me—!

The panicked, gasping death throes of the ego sank into his customary flat smile.

Dried blood cracked and flaked off as the magus assumed a pitching stance on a nonexistent mound. Clutched in that formerly empty right hand was nothing but a

image

projection

. A baseball may be two cowhide halves joined with one hundred and eight red double stitches, but a magus had no need for prayer.

“

Play Ball

Intervention Start

—!”

With the incantation as the ignition and the arm, a barrel, the first

ball

shell

was

pitched

fired

.

||===========================||

A fastball was not a ball thrown as hard as possible. The “fast” in the name came from the backspin applied to the ball to induce an upwards Magnus effect, a reduction of air pressure at the top of the ball coinciding with a reciprocal buildup at the bottom to create “lift,” giving the impression of the ball defying gravity.

The greater the lift, the shorter the distance the ball must travel to the strike zone. The shorter the distance, the less travel time. The less travel time, the lower the drag on the ball. The less air resistance — the faster the pitch. Hence, “fastball.”

The average major league pitcher was capable of throwing a hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. The fastest ever recorded sat just below one hundred and seventy. Doping his body with Reinforcement, the genius magus equaled the record without even knowing the correct form or technique to throw to a four-seam fastball.

“PLA — ”

The projected baseball drowned out the troll’s reprise. No matter what he shouted, Retch had less than half a second to swing and connect with his curved, spirit root bat.

Two options: hit by sight or hit by read.

In theory, the former was simply visually following the ball’s path. Such a feat was impossible in practice. Tentacle-like lignin limbs were one thing, but a troll didn’t have the kinetic visual acuity to track a baseball the physics of cork and rubber wrapped in animal hide no longer hindered. Then, the latter. Except, attempting to read an enchanted pitch based on a magus’ form and grip was a greater foolishness. With both weapons neutralized, any pinch hitter would despair, yet every muscle in the troll’s upper body tensed in preparation to swing.

Retch didn’t know a lot of things. Everyone he had met today seemed to know more than he did. That was natural, he wouldn’t be an apprentice if he knew as much as Master. There was one thing that Retch knew. Was his eagerness due to his knowledge or did the knowledge gush forth from his eagerness?

The entire day’s anticipation compressed to a single point. Everything that he had done and everything that he had to do no longer mattered when he stood to attention in that imaginary batter’s box. The curved bat he had carved himself and the body tempered under a bridge became one as two thoughts repeated.

Play ball.

The muscle fibers that were coiled to their utmost loosened. The bat moved.

Hitting by sight or read were both techniques to confirm data that had already been collected. No matter who the pitcher might be, they will ultimately only pitch one course down the bridge known as the pitcher’s lane. Batting began with knowing the limit of the pitcher’s thinking. Even the greatest and most fundamental magic, “to know,” was a technique that reproduced what had been long lost. The prototype that both sight and read had been created to imitate— the troll swung by that instinct alone.

Ccccccrrrrraaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkk —

Mystery against mystery. Projected ball against draconic bat. Force was transferred as the thunderous hiss rang through the demolished cat village.

Home run.

||===========================||

Ccccccrrrrraaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkkkk —

The projected ball might have only left the bat, but not even a couch leaguer could mistake that crack. Forget about the outfield, that ball would sail into the stands of any major league stadium.

A hit was a loss for the pitcher and the troll certainly hit the ball.

Disbelief was flattened behind the smile because the pitch was no longer important. The troll’s expression betrayed that the slug had not achieved a transcendental state. It did not “see” the result and make the image come to fruition. It only hit the ball. Anyone could hit a ball if they simply pursued the technique of “hitting a ball.” Nothing special. Nothing that validated him as the apprentice for a Magician.

Raising his hand as if rebuking such a result, Flat flipped the formless switch inside of him as he snatched at thin air.

“

Game—

Intervention—

”

Barely able to circulate the

mana

burden

absorbed from the atmosphere, the Magic Circuits retaliated. Previously silken magical energy sawed at his rotating imaginary nerves. A thousand needles missing the vein. Yet, the syrup that his circuits barely scraped through his half-broken body was so sweet, so right that he lost himself to the action the pain incited.

Condensing and dissolving, his consciousness reached across the

expanse

void

to reattach the

formula

magecraft

to the ball. Even the solar hurricane raging within couldn’t halt the magus, now. The more a process was repeated, the more the steps became conflated as a task and the result became a matter of course. Flat specialized in disrupting foreign magical energy and formulae — he could attach a spell to an image embedded within his Magic Circuit expressed through his magical energy in his sleep.

The only missing parameter was exit velocity. That

formula

equation

consisted of bat speed, pitch speed, and a ratio between the restitution of bat-ball collision which was dependent on the physical properties of the bat and ball. Calculating the answer to a mundane formula should be more simple than attaching the magecraft, except how did you derive the moment of inertia from a bat made out of spirit root swung by a troll to hit a reinforced, projected baseball?

The ultimate gap between mystère and physics that couldn’t be bridged.

Regardless, he struggled to compile the result before the ball crossed the border between the infield and out.

Subjective time stretched as the processing load was rerouted from the brain to the Magic Circuits.

Every cell creaked as when it flowed through him, washing it away. The price had already been paid and the destination already determined — a one-way ferry ticket — so sever the extraneous. There was no need to flood the vessel if everything was in the palm of his hand.

“

Game Select

Intervention Begin

!”

In a game that consisted of one hit vs. three strikes, it was obvious the batter had the advantage. Yet, the children of Monaco whose parents ran or owned the casinos would contest every ball or foul with deliberate abandon. Fools. How could they take such odds in the first place? The thrill of the gamble. Irrational. You didn’t need to throw three strikes, just throw one out. The pitcher only needed to catch the ball after it had been hit. Now, to make that

theory

game plan

into reality—

Reinforced feet packed the gravel that made up the imaginary mound in the Great Cat’s Village as an anchor point materialized on Flat’s palm. Attached was a line of magecraft, a bungee cord only he could see. Using all his remaining magical energy, the magus pulled!

Attraction.

A patented formula that used this magecraft attribute to fly was popular among female, New Age magi who sincerely believed traveling by broom was coming back stronger than any other 90’s trend. Named after its creator, Touko Travel was more accurately known as Anchor Attraction Ascension. Placing a magical anchor at a location, the wannabe witch reeled herself towards — or rather as Attraction manipulated gravitational forces, fell towards her intended destination.

An incredible amount of time, processing power, and magical energy was necessary to accurately fix an anchor point on an object moving as fast as a hit baseball. Flat reversed the placement, so no matter where the troll hit the ball, it would literally fall into the palm of his hand.

Perfect theory smashed itself against the unyielding, harsh reality as frenzied Magic Circuits spun. Unable to simultaneously maintain the computations and magical energy — the magus approached a dead end.

Ragged breaths like a vampire’s claws tearing at his lungs as a diminishing blood supply couldn’t keep up with the oxygen exchange. Burned-off nerves replaced with Magic Circuits reducing the total capacity. A self-destructive feedback loop that announced there was no option but to release the formula if Flat Escardos wanted a future.

So, hold onto the formula.

That’s fine. It’s not like he was overly fond of this body in the first place. It has always been a tool, a disposable vessel; the truth behind it was —

Hold it. Hold it. Hold it.

“RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHH —”

A roar from bent lips to ward away the blackness of unconsciousness betrayed the internal damage. Over ten percent of his Magic Circuit had ruptured. Boiling blood rushed out of him. Flat didn’t know the human body contained so much blood. Compared to this, halting a speeding sedan with his body was preferable.

Attraction was a simple formula capable of altering complex trajectories, but that’s what made it so dangerous to the magus. Flat was altering an incredible amount of force in an incredibly short amount of time with imaginary energy. Continuous pulling or casting multiple cords of attraction could burn the magus out before he arrived at his destination. It might be possible to withstand the blowback with a Dead Apostle’s curse and a stockpile of

magical energy

blood

, but Flat, who had been fighting without rest, quickly reached his limit.

Smiling face stalwart, there was no hint of doubt or a wince of pain because he knew, at the zenith of the arc, the projected ball would fall, drawn to the supernatural gravity. As if he had calculated the future, there—!

Severing the thread of attraction before glowing Magic Circuits seared flesh, Flat reached out as the ball twirled back from the outfield.

Imagine the expression on the troll’s face; that smile must have been wiped off. But keep your eye on the ball — eye on the ball. Blood, sweat, and pain was oozing out of every pore of the body, but there was always pain. Soft hands. Soft hands. The ball will fall right in, no need to worry, champ. His father never said anything close because magi didn’t play catch with their heir, much less their targets.

Slick with blood, Flat’s hands drew around the plummeting ball. Finally. Apprentice of Zelretch. You call that an apprentice of Zelretch? They didn’t become wrecks, they didn’t have a chance. They were all wrecks from the beginning thanks to that old man’s poor taste. . . or jealousy. Yes, jealousy! He refused to take Flat as an apprentice because he was afraid. Good, let him be afraid; him and that slug he calls apprentice.

Pure triumph underneath his smile, Flat shot a glance at the batter he struck out.

No fear. That awkward stance and those beady eyes were too dumb to hold fear, only anticipation for the next — the next what?

Spinning projected cowhide stung Flat’s hands, raw from the circuit burning calculations. A gasp escaped his lips. Not due to the pain, never, only, the ball should not have been spinning. No matter, it was already in his—

Swiveling out from his cupped palms, the ball skidded across his knuckles and dropped onto the sooty, pink ground, bouncing once, twice, before spinning to a stop.

Infield, so it was a foul.

The magus stared at the

baseball

image

evaporating into ambient magical energy.

Infield, but Flat had lost the duel of mystère.

To ensure the Magnus effect wouldn’t affect the trajectory of the hit ball, his cord of attraction had nullified all the backspin he had placed during the pitch as well as any spin that a standard baseball bat would include. A standard baseball bat.

The troll’s absolute failure of a homemade bat was known as a banana bat, a spurned innovation that was intended to make the game of baseball more “entertaining.” The curved barrel added a higher degree of spin to the ball, a degree that Flat had not corrected for. The creator of the bat, Emile Kinst, intended for balls that were hit to be harder to catch. Flat seethed, the failure of an inventor that history had all but forgotten was correct and Flat, who had no experience playing catch, dropped the ball.

In this first exchange, Flat had lost to the troll. Sheer dumb luck that the troll had carved himself a functional failure. Sheer dumb luck.

Breathe in and exhale.

The count: No balls. One strike.

He could cope, he always co—

Pivoting on his heel atop the imaginary mound, Flat pulled back, condensed his circulating magical energy and fired the next pitch.

Victory or loss have no meaning on the field. Baseball is about whether the gamble was good.

Fuck baseball; this was magecraft.

“

Play Ball

Intervention Start

—!”

A beam.

||===========================||

No balls. One strike.

The second pitch. Magic as black as night streaked across the lane between pitcher and hitter like the rare shooting stars Retch glimpsed arcing between the forest canopy in the mountains he had called home.

In that case, he would just have to hit starlight.

Crrrrriiiiiikkkkkkk

A full-force swing at the low inside and the accompanying clatter of contact. Sightly too wide. Not the crack of a clean hit, but enough to send the starlight blazing to the outfield.

Splat.

Retch clamped down all his muscles, refusing to step back and slip on the trail of blood that had dribbled down his right calf.

No balls. Two strikes.

The troll raised his bat and faced the next —

“Play ball —!”

The second line of starlight shot forth from Friend’s fist. Smaller, sharper, faster, as if Friend had taken the last beam and flattened it.

Retch began his swing.

• The last pitch was aimed at the inside corner.
• Retch had two strikes against his name.
• Friend was trying to end this as fast as possible.

Three unassailable facts. For the hitter, the recorded past that limited the scope of the future was their greatest asset. For Retch, there was no past. This troll only had the strike zone: the width of the home plate multiplied by the height of the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of rawhide pants tied with a hemp cord. This was the imaginary plane upon which the duelists forged the uncertain present, so all the troll could do was continue to hit.

Crrrrriiiiiikkkkkkk.

Outside low. Anyone could tell that the pitch was outside the strike zone. With his large frame, there was no need for Retch to overextend to make contact with the ball-beam. He made contact anyway.

A fly.

The troll didn’t relax his muscles as he followed through. Instead, he tensed them, making sure his body was as tight as possible.

Splat.

The troll’s body groaned at the impact, but Retch didn’t even notice. Play Ball. Play Ball. This was everything he wanted. He had even revealed himself to humans to play at his best condition. Something as insignificant as wounds that weren’t even fatal yet wouldn’t stop him. After all,

No balls. Two strikes. Three fouls.

In baseball, every foul counted as a strike; however, the batter could not be out on a foul.

Strike One/Foul One: Without any fielders, any ball that lands in the infield was considered a foul.

Strike Two/ Foul Two: A ball that makes contact with the bat before it strikes the batter was considered a foul.

Strike Two/Foul Three: A ball that makes contact with the bat before it strikes the batter was considered a foul.

The starlight Friend shot at Retch didn’t hit when hit. Inserted within the beam was an additional layer of magic that redirected the light across the bat and into Retch. The troll didn’t mind because a foul was a foul. That was play ball. Without wiping the blood running down the length of the barrel, the troll raised his bat once again to hit the next pitch.

To Retch, reinforced projected balls or beams of magical energy were just play. Calling an activity that left gaping wounds “playing” may sound as frivolous as a blood taking magician hoping to gamble his boredom away on a pleasure cruiser, but in the mountain forest where the troll grew up, games didn’t exist. Lightning felled trees or ignited forest fires in the autumn. Snow banks one could fall into, break a leg, and die of exposure in the winter. Ravenous or impassioned wildlife in the spring. Armed pleasure hikers travel across the bridge in the summer.

For Retch, living meant something else died. All life was equal by the bridge he had called home. Knowing that every day could be your last, there were never any extraneous thoughts allowed because his last moment would be the first moment his focus wandered. He had been lucky. The moment his focus wandered, it had wandered across his bridge and Retch had not met with Death, but Father Time.

Hitting without the intention of taking a life was a luxury beyond the troll’s wildest dreams. There was no greater joy compared to playing ball. Retch hit for the sake of hitting. At the same time, the bridge, the mountains, and the forest where every action was life or death reverberated inside him. No matter the activity, the only stakes Retch knew how to gamble with were his body and life. And, there was still a whole lot of ball left to play before the troll would be satisfied.

“Play ball —!”

||===========================||

“

Play ball—!

Intervention Start—!

”

Flat’s last teacher once said in regards to the mystery of the modern era: the who no longer mattered, the how could not matter, and the why — no magus would fathom asking that question. What was left was a case of the blind leading the blind in an endless cycle so that their accusations towards each other were lamentations of their own deficiencies.

Flat could see the how or at least if he wasn’t the one who could see the how, he grasped the how.

The fourth pitch, the corresponding fourth foul, and the third gaping wound.

So, how was the

slug

troll

still standing?

The magus’ incredulity sank underneath the fixed smile. No matter the answer to the question, Flat would end it right now. Rather, he had no choice but to end it.

To use an analogy, although the vessel known as Flat Escardos was equipped with a state-of-the-art electronic control unit, he was built as a Japanese bubble car. He neither had the bulwark of a tank, the capacity of a battleship, or the propulsion of a jet, yet during this contest against a troll he had pushed his limits to fight as a fictitious mobile weapon might.

As the Magic Circuits were forced to creak once more, Flat’s subjective time dilated. The starter, Flat’s

Od

Lesser Source

, was accelerated as it circulated so that it could be rapidly exchanged with the surrounding

Mana

Greater Source

which was compressed, accelerated, and exchanged for more

Mana

Greater Source

, creating infinity through constant motion.

With great pains, layer upon layer of formulae were accelerated, compiled, and compressed to form a molten ball of magecraft in the magus’ bloody hand. Not a ball or a magical missile. The pure essence of Flat’s elemental alignment.

Set position, takeback, step.

The shredding creak of overtaxed magecraft circuits rending flesh was the six-note organ fanfare, announcing—

“

Circuit・Full Connect

Complete Circuit Coupling

.

Play Ball

Intervention Start

.”

A true “heater”.

Like the magical energy that composed it, the

heater

ball of molten ether

compressed and, still accelerating like a controlled fusion reaction, erupted from the pitcher’s fist.

A round shot out of a battery.

Unlike the projected fastball which married mystère with physics to achieve its velocity, this magecraft was simply “fast,” traveling at almost two hundred kilometers per hour.

But even that wasn’t enough.

Although it was just leaving his hand, Flat knew that in exchange for such speed, the heater was too wide. It would travel past the troll’s left shoulder and be considered a ball. It didn’t matter. The troll would still swing and hit. That was all the troll knew, and if he hit it into the outfield, then—

But, this isn’t a game, the thought rang through the magus’ slowed mind.

This was never a game. Just an intruder that had to be done away with so that Flat could leave this branch. There were no rules, so,

“

Quick Load・Batter Up

Status Recompile

—!”

In response, the eighteen-point four-meter lane separating pitcher and hitter lit up, the fading etheric trails from the beams rapidly reassembled and expanded to form three magic circles, neon signposts on an empty overpass.

0.1 seconds.

The heater blazed through the first magic circle, absorbing the magical energy, and disappeared.

Technically, all pitches disappear. No matter how fast the ball is traveling or what type of spin is placed upon it, the earth’s gravity will cause the ball to fall. However, falling is merely disappearing from view. No matter the physical laws humans have branded onto the current World, there is no such thing as a true disappearing ball in baseball.

The exertion from overusing magecraft fogged up Flat’s consciousness, so he did not remember who said those words. He only recalled the gentle back-and-forth rocking and the laughs coming from the designer lounges in front of the widescreens showing horse racing, Formula 1, and baseball.

Even so, there are still three pitches which the Japanese have labeled the「

kieru makyuu

消える魔球

」 or disappearing “demonic” balls:

The first is the fork ball. A stainless steel fork stabbed into a projected baseball. It begins as a fastball but then rapidly drops, sometimes leaving the strike zone — an unfortunate characteristic leading to its coining as a disappearing demonic “ball.” Not to mention, due to the strain on the pitcher’s shoulder and elbow, its cousin, the splitter, was more commonly used to the point the pitch was known as “the pitch of the 80’s” Claws, not hands, split the projected baseball in half. The fork clangs against the hardwood bar top.

The second is a knuckleball. The ball is pitched with as little spin as possible. These seams here give the ball a heterogeneous surface. A newly projected baseball is pounded to dust. This asymmetry increases the turbulence of the airflow, so when the ball travels through the air, it follows an erratic course. Sometimes, the batter sees the illusion of multiple paths existing at once. In a job interview, this pitch will tell you its greatest weakness is its greatest strength. A ball that’s difficult to hit is equally difficult to control, catch, and even call.

The third is the only screwball of the three. A tossed ball from the peanut gallery goes wide, is caught, and has a nearby corkscrew slammed into it. The ball rises for a moment while traveling laterally. Aqueous purple fish lept from an uncorked wine bottle, gliding in the air for a moment. The orientation of the seams applies a force that impacts the level of turbulence the ball experiences. The fish plunged into the depths below the bottleneck. In this case, the pitch is known as a—

Ability in sports was built through practice. Pitching may simply be a movement available to the human body, but at the same time, this meant repetition was necessary to refine the movement to its extreme. Flat Escardos did not have the correct body or training and thus he did not have the ability to throw a sinker, but magecraft was the death of common sense.

The ball had not disappeared, it

sank

dropped

towards the inside corner of the troll’s massive strike zone.

Heels rolled back, hip flared, a mass of flesh twisted, moving to catch the mass of Ether on the barrel of the draconian bat.

Too slow,

slug

troll

.

A second 0.1 seconds.

The sinker passed through a second

magic circle

impossibility

and turned at a right angle.

Trivial things can be intriguing. Take the oh-so-coveted “late” delivery. It may be true that a pitch that changes direction close to home plate is more difficult to hit, but humans are too eager to use words like change and disruption. A pitch is a single motion. A tossed coin only has two outcomes and by the time the coin has been flipped, barring any external interference, that outcome has been determined. Looking at things backward is another Ancestor’s purview; however, there’s a certain elegance to that approach for a problem like this. A pitch’s spin, release point, and velocity parameters will tell you where the ball will land. So, the “late” delivery isn’t late at all — it’s decided early, before the ball is even pitched. The baseball and corkscrew were tossed back into the peanut gallery. Any change of direction is an optical illusion. No matter how much spin a human adds to the ball, it cannot move “sideways.” The baseball with the corkscrew still protruding out from it swerved like a boomerang, traveling through the side door and landing on the deck outside. After all, it is impossible to change the spin of the ball from vertical to horizontal and vice-versa.

||===========================||

From the inside low, the heated sinker pivoted at a right angle without losing any velocity.

Optimally performed, batting consisted of the longest possible consecutive movement for the body. Foot connected to the hip; hip connected to the back; back connected to the shoulders. Like the mutated pattern inside Friend’s body that converted life energy into magic, link by link, the body rotates, producing a spiral that accelerates the bat.

The troll’s stance was already too closed to hit the redirected ball. There was no time for correction; baseball was made of worlds that begin and close in a second.

A course that had already been charted. An impossible pitch. A swing that was in the midst of being swung.

Just one of these would make a cleanup hitter sink into despair.

But, Retch was a troll. A being who loomed over two dice unable to comprehend he had rolled seven pips more times than possible. The apprentice of Zelretch had never been burdened with the first lesson every batter learned: he might actually not hit the ball that was pitched.

In the midst of swinging in a closed stance, the troll hyperextended his elbows.

— Something tore.

The bat laterally lurched towards the turning ball like a predator pouncing on its prey.

— The disgusting sound of ripped sinew and tendon.

So what if the world of baseball was a second, the razor-thin edge between life and death in the mountains was even shorter.

Strike. Foul. Home Run. Winning. Losing. None of the chains that dragged a batter down ever entered the troll’s mind — only play ball. To play was to hit, and so,

The last 0.1 seconds.

The ball traveled through the third magic circle and changed trajectory a second time.

||===========================||

Logically, any ball in the strike zone can be hit. It requires a genius batter who is not only capable of determining the type of pitch and its trajectory but also with the mind-muscle connection to make the correction in less than a split second. But even such a hypothetical batter wouldn’t be able to hit a ball that changes direction twice. He would have already reacted to the first change and thus couldn’t correct for the second. In truth, if the pitch changes a second time, it isn’t baseball anymore, but a true

demonic ball

魔球

.

A magus had no use for such infernal contracts, so what was prepared instead was a—

The

magical ball

魔球

roared.

The third magic circle shot the molten Ether upwards at almost two hundred kilometers per hour, lifting off like a rocket aimed to shoot down the moon!

First having thundered across the

lane

bridge

, the pitch sank into the inside corner before moving at a right angle to the outside corner. With the latest impossible change of direction, the ball path traced an isosceles triangle if one was to take on an overlooking view. The two-stage sinker was not a brush ball that played chicken with the batter to force a swing and a miss. From the beginning, the magical ball had been thrown as a bean ball to pierce the opponent’s skull — a murderous pitch above foul, ball, or strike.

The blowback was the white-hot magical energy draining from his overheated Magic Circuits that made him weak at the knees. Flat’s breaking body braced itself against the fall, but the sudden movement sent his unsteady consciousness over the bridge. In the midst of that momentary blackness, a

image

stereogram

that wasn’t a memory flashed in front of the magus’ eyes. Not a golden sunset, but deep red — almost purple. There was no yellowing, dried-out grass, only dirt, packed from being stepped on again and again. Every breath saturated rather than scorched the lung; there was barely enough oxygen with so much water vapor in the air.

This was no frying pan summer, filled with “youth”.

A bat and ball, a pitcher and a batter, but not baseball. This was never baseball, just two children throwing and hitting balls as hard as possible at each other. The method and the madness of playground rules, constructed from the miracle of coincidence was an impugnment of magus pride, calling into question the unassailable fact that he alone was special, that he alone held the qualifications to—

Hooooossssshhhhhhhh.

The howl of the stale, ammoniacal air following a swing and the unbreaking smile that almost broke. Not because Flat was participating in juvenility that he was above, but because within his reverie he heard the impossible crack of the curved bat making contact with a ball of molten ether.

Magical ball

Two-staged sinker

defeated.

Spent, the magus dropped to his knees atop that imaginary mound.

Strike Two/Foul Five: The ball landed in foul territory.

||===========================||

The troll still stood in front of the ICBMeow Muscle Cannon at bat. Thick lifeblood was oozing out of three gaping wounds, and there was a slight tremble in his tree-trunk legs. If Flat waited, the troll would fall down, leaving the magus to blast off to another timeline at his leisure. But,

the

slug

troll

hit the magical ball.

How.

Flat always knew how. Always, so how—

Although he couldn’t control his subjective time to the same extent as it, the activation and rotation of the Magic Circuits was capable of extending a magus’ subjective time to the point where he could track high-speed movements. If only — but he didn’t see it.

Drifting from the bottom of the underwater heat haze:

Humans love to conceive of the batter and pitcher as rivals, but that can’t be the case. Look at the pair on the screen. Unless the pitcher knows how the batter hits, she won’t strike her out. Unless the batter knows how the pitcher throws, she won’t be able to hit the ball. You could say that more so than doubles partners, figure skaters, and even synchronized swimmers the batter and pitcher are the most attuned.

Hit by sight, or hit by read.

The magus clenched his fists, pink charred

dirt

kitty litter

compacting in his palms as his terrible premonition began drowning him. Hit by read. The traps that he had set all over the Great Cat’s Village, the exact parries to each of his combos, hitting every single pitch and even a two-stage sinker, apprentice of the

Kaleidoscope

Second Magician

, calling someone he’s never met Friend. Play ball, how many times had the troll come to play b—

No, hit by sight. Flat filled his lungs with the fishy underground air, and exhaled. It had to be hit by sight.

It was hit by sight, so even if he had nothing left, Flat would pitch one last time.

Let’s go into extra innings

slug

troll

.

Ignoring every limit, the magus picked himself up and began compiling a new formula to break through the troll’s Multi-Dimensional Refraction Phenomenon.

||===========================||

In the last exchange, the feedback from the glowing ball of life energy reverberated through the length of the spirit root that Retch had carved. The interlocking scales that dampened the impact groaned from the force of Retch’s swing and the opposing force of Friend’s pitch. Yet, the draconic wood held without deforming. Bent bats could never return to their original form. Retch had spent too long carving that bat for it to be bent before ball was completely played.

Friend looked tired. Retch was tired too, but if Friend was willing to pitch, it was only polite for Retch to hit with all his strength. Although the holes in his left hip, right upper thigh, and right shoulder looked bad, the internal damage was worse. Repeatedly hitting without regard, Retch had ruptured his intercostal muscles. The troll shouldn’t be conscious, let alone able to continue batting.

A bat on the edge of bending. A pitch exhausted from overextension. They stood at opposite ends of the bridge, yet looked in the same direction — directly at the other.

The troll tightened his grip on the bat and straightened out his trembling forearms.

No Master. No Zel. Not even Retch himself.

Losing himself in hitting the ball was a dream come true.

Play ball. Play ball.

The life energy spun out from Friend like the whirlpools in the night sky. It wasn’t as dense nor as thick as when he pitched a ball that changed directions as it skipped through the air.

Retch swallowed down some of his own blood. It tasted like this morning’s stew.

Play ball. Play ball.

As always, Friend was smiling. Good magic. The flattened collar of his shirt may have been bloody and the belt which made sure that same shirt was immaculately tucked into those knee-length shorts was fraying, but his expression was finally the only expression Retch had ever known when he lived in the mountains, yet was so rare on humans.

Always. For Retch, play ball was, always so f—

Friend pulled his entire body back as he condensed the magic in his hand. With a roar,

“BATTER UP — PLAY BALL—!”

The power and speed were mediocre. Compared to the other balls that came before, it was the slowest and weakest pitch so far. The trajectory, on the other side of the bridge, was erratic and the form of the magic. . . it constantly changed. As the magic traveled down the bridge what started as a ball of magical light turned to gales turned into flames turned into ice turned into needles turned into—

Almost kaleidoscopic, like the jewels that glistened in Master’s sky. The form never mattered to Retch. As long as Friend pitched it, it was only right for Retch to hit it.

Troll blood spattered and ran down the inside of his rawhide vest as Retch wound back. He didn’t wince; he didn’t notice. The pitch was on its way. Not too soon, not too late. There. PLAY BA—

A split second before contact, the magic vanished.

||===========================||

Imagine the strike zone, bat, and ball as two-dimensional planes. Every time the bat or ball moves through the strike zone, a certain amount of area is taken up. Fundamentally, baseball is making sure the area the bat and the ball take up do or do not overlap. The batter wants the bat to make contact with the ball at the most advantageous location, whereas the pitcher wants the ball not to make contact with the bat or to only make contact in a location disadvantageous to the batter.

Now, imagine the bat doubling itself for a moment. Two bats would take up twice as much area, meaning there was a greater chance of overlap between the bats and ball. Then, what if this was taken to its extreme and there were a near-infinite number of bats? The strike zone consists of a finite area, so no matter where the ball travels, there will be a bat to make contact.

Even a line will become a plane if there are enough lines.

Just pitch a ball outside the strike zone and force a swing and a miss. That’s difficult because after a certain number, the material and shape no longer matter. If it’s possible to hit anything with infinite monkeys, then it’s possible with an infinite number of bats.

Then, if it was impossible to pitch a ball an infinite number of bats couldn’t hit, what was that constantly changing magecraft that disappeared?

Western magecraft primarily consisted of the magus connecting to a Grand Ritual that has been inscribed and fused with the local leylines. These Grand Rituals were more commonly known as a magecraft foundation.

The fundamental ability of the magus, Flat Escardos, was creating improvisational formulae by taking inventory of the current location’s mystical factors. This formula would act as both the magic foundation as well as the corresponding protocol to activate the magecraft.

The merit of this talent was clear to any magus. Where a Western magus’ spellcasting was predominately limited by location, this cursed blessed child was capable of using the optimal formula no matter where he might be.
There were two weaknesses. It was nigh impossible to reconstruct the exact formula and as the formula moved through time or space, it transformed due to the rapidly shifting mystical nature of the makeshift foundation, sometimes becoming unstable or even unworkable.

The Great Cat’s Village that was nowhere and everywhere at the same time was within the range of every magecraft foundation in the modern world. That was not to say that every Grand Ritual that served as the scaffold of a magecraft foundation was inscribed in the village. The myriad of mystic factors would cancel each other out, rendering the simplest magecraft unusable. In short, no matter the foundation — rune, western alchemy, witchcraft, voodoo — the Great Cat’s Village supported it so that each spell would exhibit its basic effect. It was a feature of the village that should have had no effect on Flat, whose

nameless

void

magecraft instinctively broke the land into its supernatural elements to be reassembled to suit the exact formula he created on the fly rather than being based in a pre-existing human tradition. Nevertheless, an advantage was an advantage. Smile unbroken, Flat had once again stepped away from what he felt was natural to reach greater heights.

What was the cost — to reach the destination that it pointed towards, he betrayed his own magecraft.

The only compensation — because the Great Cat’s Village supported every magecraft foundation, it was simple to make sure the formula that composed the pitch didn’t exist as a mystère at the location where the strike zone lay.

The pitch would pass through the strike zone, nothing but ambient magical energy and a collection of momentarily incoherent factors, before recompiling itself behind the strike zone to obliterate the troll.

It was possible to overpower a

formula

spell

that was in the process of taking form as magecraft; however, even with an infinite number of bats, it was not possible to destroy a

formula

spell

that did not yet exist.

Beyond a

magical ball

two-stage sinker

, this was a true

disappearing ball

Schrödinger’s pitch

.

Flat had taken that kaleidoscope of infinite bats and sealed them away in a cat-box.

He could admit it now, or rather he had to admit it. That troll was worthy of being Zelretch’s apprentice. But, if that was the case, Flat was equally — no, more qualified. The old man couldn’t see it. Then, there was nothing lost. Nothing was ever lost if Flat could just get through this troll and into the cannon.

Slug

Troll

, it doesn’t matter how hard you swing. The shape of the bat that you brought doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you can hit every single thing I pitch. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve reached a fragment of

Kaleidoscope

The Second

, because from the beginning there was nothing to hit.

Whoosh.

Like the maw of the battery the cats created from stone golems, the tip of the troll’s bat faced the ceiling of the Great Cat’s Village. The swing that had long passed its zenith and only now finished the follow-through had come into contact with nothing but thin air. In the next moment, the formula would recompile into a magical missile shot with the force of mercury expelled from a waterjet cutter.

Only — all the magical energy, no, the formula itself has disappeared.

There was only silence left in the kitty-litter wasteland broken by,

“Sorry, Friend.” The most grating voice Flat had ever heard. “Two hit ball.”

Strike Two/Foul Six: The ball is hit twice in one continuous swing.

How was he capable of hitting something that didn’t even—

No, the time for consideration was long over. Smile still branded on his face, Flat tore off his left sleeve.

A deeper darkness than the dried blood coating the arm curdled as golden emblazoned lines which were arranged in regular geometric shapes sparkled like starlight. This was the trump card he wrested away from the researchers who studied the remnants of the

Valkyrie

swan-dressed dolls

within

Fushiruka

the Gate of Subordination

.

Without a word, he connected it to his frayed Magic Circuit and the Great Cat’s Village sped away into convulsing darkness.

[You]

7 / Water Under The Bridge

When the magus regained consciousness, he had taken his boyhood form. Surrounded by darkness to the zeroth power, what existed behind him was the multiplicative identity. Not a void, only a shade who lifted an imploring hand towards the boy, begging him for — knowledge?

Sensing the boy was a kindred spirit, the darkness picked at him until he unraveled. First, each strand of Magic Circuit and Crest was teased and pulled out of place like one might pick apart string cheese. Unsatisfied, the shadow began picking at the boy’s soul, spiritron by spiritron, scavenging for knowledge.

The boy’s entire life had also been spent searching for knowledge, not true wisdom, a different destination. All he ever found was rejection.

The first block the darkness reaped from him was that scorching summer day when he asked to join the network and was taught about baseball instead. The memory, once so fierce and vigorous was now a lifeless corpse bobbing to the surface of the boy’s consciousness.

“It’s a gamble. Double down here or don’t. I can tell that you weren’t meant to be a Dead Apostle, Flat. You’re always welcome to stay, but all I can teach you are trivial things like baseball.” Repudiation from a faceless Demon Lord. “Becoming a Dead Apostle never gave anyone an answer, only more summer homework. Study at the Clock Tower. Yes, most of the magi there spend their entire lives without learning anything meaningful. That just means it’s high-risk, high-reward. We both know you’ve always preferred to play all or nothing.”

The

first betrayal

original sin

. Refused a bite from the fruit of power, the boy had no choice but to partake in the fruit of knowledge. The boy continued to smile and let his parents know their thirteenth assassination attempt had paved his last step to the Clock Tower.

The second block that was reaped was the well that the boy was haphazardly tossed down.

At first, the teachers in the Clock Tower were ecstatic to have such a mystically gifted student to mold, but they soon became perplexed, and finally despondently resigned. The boy continued to smile. He watched more movies and played more games, the products of mainstream culture, to learn what constituted

common sense

conventional wisdom

. If he understood human products, if he loved human products, it meant that he inherently loved humans, magecraft, and therefore himself. That was what he told it. It never replied, but the boy knew it listened.

The boy’s plan didn’t work. It didn’t matter if he filtered his thoughts through the cultural capital he accrued; those around him still didn’t understand him when he spoke. The boy simply saw a different world. After a famous puppeteer gave up trying to humor the boy, an old professor from the Department of Spiritual Evocation mentioned that a Lord who specialized in cases like the boy’s finally had space in his classroom. That man might be able to teach the boy what he wanted to know.

Without any expectations, the boy went to meet the teacher. No matter the lecturer’s reputation as one of the top three professors female students wanted to sleep with or his now legendary teaching prowess, the boy had been sure this teacher would reject him as the last had.

I might be sick. I try so hard to act like a proper magus, so why can’t I do it?

I guess another professor ended up hating me. I wonder how long it’ll be before the next one does too.

As the boy thought such thoughts, he did his best to smile. Although he was never taught, he had known how to construct a smile since he was a child. He worked magecraft on the muscles of his face to maintain a cheerful expression and then perfectly isolated all signs of magecraft so that no outside observers would realize that he was using it to smile. He had worked magecraft to fix his muscles over and over and over again. During that walk down the corridor to the El-Melloi Classroom, the boy realized that he would have to go on casting that same magecraft over his face for the rest of his life.

His heart broke.

Too late, or rejected one too many times. Perhaps if the boy had been told about the Clock Tower earlier, perhaps if he had asked his parents to attend earlier, perhaps if he had met Rocco Belfaban earlier, he would have stepped into that classroom. Instead, Flat Escardos turned around and ran up the corridor, away from the Clock Tower.

The next years were spent traveling around the world, collecting knowledge. Knowledge to correct his deficiencies. Knowledge to determine a destination. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The boy harvested it all, sinking deeper into that well until all he saw was a moon he had no intention of shooting down.

There were many exotic locations and many different people — the only constants were it and the bent line on his face.

Naturally, what the boy experienced in the Clock Tower was repeated over and over again. A prospective teacher would be overjoyed at the opportunity to shine such an unpolished jewel and reap the rewards that accompanied such mentorship. They would soon give up, no matter how hard the boy tried to fit their mold.

Eventually, that bent line felt like it had been carved into his mouth, and before long that carving felt like a brand. When he was little, the boy once feared that he would come to hate humans and magecraft. A planar object that was bent became a surface. Having no choice but to fix itself in the third dimension, it despaired.

“A human life weighs more than the Earth. That just means the Earth is more worthless than a human life.”

He would say with his eyes like holes as if something had fallen out.

Thinking it was possible to fill those holes, the boy continued gathering knowledge with it trailing behind until he was no longer a boy and took on the moniker of ‘magus.’

The third and final block was reaped.

Having run out of prospective mentors, the magus found himself clinging to the bottom of a concrete wharf, watching a

Casa

pleasure boat

glide through the waves of the moonlit Ligurian Sea. When the ship was out of the bay and into the open ocean, the magus scrambled onto the empty, artificial, concrete beach. After drying his clothes with a simple spell, he walked across the dock to a shipping container that doubled as a souvenir shop.

Fearing their wayward son who had garnered a reputation as a “teacher destroyer,” the magus’ parents had put their family Magic Crest up as collateral in a gamble to secure new territory. They lost on purpose; their true objective was to ensure the magus never returned or died trying.

When the castellan who preferred to perch on stools like an owl reported the crest in her quarterly earnings report to the owner of the Casa, he secured the family’s inheritance. It was not unusual for his kind to stockpile magical artifacts; however, this Magic Crest was well-known for being useless even to the Escardos family. Just as well then, for the owner of the Casa was reputed to be fond of trivial things.

The magus didn’t know whether it was useless or not, but it was knowledge and rightful his. That was reason enough to brave trespassing the defenseless souvenir shop. He quickly found the secret door behind the counter and descended into the bowels of the dock.

Considering himself the greatest undead showman, the owner of Casa held a gambling tournament that was to take place on the pleasure vessel on this otherwise calm night. The winner would be granted anything that was within the power of the owner. Based on the owner’s status, abilities, and resources, many who sought to enter clearly expressed that this was a ‘Holy Grail

Gamble

War

.’ The magus had entered a puppet into the contest that he observed with a direct video feed sent to his Magic Circuits. His less trustworthy ‘puppets,’ an array of hypnotized magi and low-ranking Dead Apostles had paved the way for the puppet that was made in the magus’ image. After climbing the ranks of the tournament, the puppet was to face off against the faceless Demon Lord who meant nothing to the boy.

All of this was a diversion. When the magus had asked the Casa’s owner to return the crest, the Demon Lord laughed and told the boy that a king’s treasury was the king’s alone. If the magus wanted to be bestowed a portion as a favor, he would have to gamble like the other supplicants. The magus didn’t remember how he knew because he had nothing to do with the Demon Lord, but the king utilized a probability warping bounded field in his duels. The how that no one else could see. The magus needed to win, and if winning and losing held the same odds, he would simply bypass the result.

What awaited him at the bottom of the long flight of stairs wasn’t darkness that picked at him, but the thick mist one would find in open water. The light the magus cast to ward off this mist was small, like a will-o-wisp, but he quickly found his family’s crest in the middle of the cavernous room.

“I lost,” a dignified voice accompanied by an aura that oozed like an oily blight rang through the mist. “If I knew you would end up like this, I should have

hired you on

made you a Dead Apostle

, Messara be damned.”
The Demon Lord floated high above the magus, his figure outlined with sickly purple arcs of St. Elmo’s fire that rumbled underneath the invisible ceiling. In the video feed playing in the back of the magus’ mind, the Demon Lord made the first roll of the dice in a luxurious room.

“You sent a puppet, Flat? I didn’t teach you to be so disrespectful.”

You only taught me trivial things, like baseball.

Smiling as he always did, “Do you know Master Rohngall, Mister Van Fem?”

“Of course, I know Rohngall. Last I heard, he’s wasting his time on growing plant-based muscles that actually bleed.”

“I asked him once whether he could make a puppet of me. He started lecturing about the glories of the Middle Ages and the absolute law that while you can imitate many things that humans can do, you cannot create something that is the same as a human. I told him I had seen the trailer for The Prestige and even read the novel before seeing the movie. He agreed to at least draw up some blueprints because I was sure having a second self would be more like The Sixth Day, but he didn’t get far. I got further. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s better than yours.”

Both Flat and it could clearly see that the Demon Lord standing in front of them was not the original but a puppet. The provocation was clear: you aren’t as important as entertaining the patrons at the Casa tonight.

“It’s a quirk for us puppeteers. As fools who cannot comprehend what is impossible, we cannot help but craft our own theories. It’s the pet project in the back of our heads that we tell ourselves we’ll work on when we get the next decade off. Only one of us has ever made it their main undertaking, and even she came across it by accident.”

The next decade off. The words snagged at something. A magus always lives hurriedly, his teachers all declared. No reason was given as if it was obvious or they themselves had no idea why they lived hurriedly. Flat finally had the answer to that question before him. There was no way he was going to let it go.

“I have my crest.” The magus took the Magic Crest sandwiched between two planes of mystically treated glass from the earthen pedestal in the center of the cavern. “Hasta la vista.”

“I’ve never given you a tour of this workshop, have I, Flat? As a child, you always liked listening to me talk about my pieces.”

The magus ignored him and turned to leave. He was too old for trivial things.

Five steps toward the entrance to the underground chamber, the mists that blanketed the cavern began evaporating. What the magus thought was the low hum of the harbor that must surround this watery grave grew louder. It was not the crash of waves but the same measured tempo one would expect a marching militia would maintain.

Ding

— A single note rang out. The chime, no, toll, of a crystal naval bell.

DinDinDinDinDinDinDing

Then, seven more in quick succession, signaling the end of the bounded field’s watch.

The undulating note reverberated through the underwater cavern, breaking the fog to reveal masts, anchors, and hulls embedded in the stone walls. The wall in the underwater workshop was a mural of a verifiable fleet of ships that had been sunk and salvaged. But, for those who lived their world, art was never just to entertain.

There was a common paradox in the world of magecraft. Attempting to hide a phenomenon with another phenomenon only ever drew more attention to what was trying to be hidden. The only way to truly hide a phenomenon was to recontextualize it. The souvenir shop was a front. It had been constructed to hide this very workshop, perhaps this very construct.

There was no hint of mirth in the magus’ face, despite the ever-present smile. The towering wall stitched together with broken ships was nothing like the giant robots from the animated Japanese television shows he studied. Rather than the fruits of technology, magical energy coursed through those stony veins that were held together with the Demon Lord’s curse. Only, unlike the Casa, the curse looked unwieldy, almost out of phase with itself.

“A failed puppet, no, golem—”

The magus stopped himself for this was no mere golem stashed away in Davy Jones’ Locker.

“You disappoint me,” the Demon Lord calmly continued, unaware of the battlement behind him failing to contort. To Flat, it was similar to watching a booting OS continuously restarting as it failed its system checks. “I had expected, hoped that you would arrive at the Casa and be. . . you. This is Matri. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of my greatest shame. Now, it is my former greatest shame.”

No matter how much the words stung they didn’t have enough mystère to flatten a magically stitched smile.

The death parade was legendary. There were seven Demonic Castles in the world of magecraft. The Demon Lord had created all of them. One had been sunk by the Ideé Blood of the Number Eight which deepened the blood feud between the pro-human faction and the Eclipse Princess’s faction. The sacrifice was taboo. Any who dared utter the forbidden name of the Fifth Demonic Castle was never heard from again. It was unthinkable that the Ancestor would announce his shame with such aplomb.

“Then, you arrived at the Casa. For the first time since meeting your ancestor and hearing his thesis, I thought to myself, ‘Messara, if the thing you gained at the cost of a young man with a future is ‘the past,’ then I certainly don’t consider it cause for celebration.’”

The ships’ rigging vibrated, reverberating not with a hymn but a dirge to the drowned that saturated the stone foundation. Yet, stone and puppet did not yield to turpentine and catgut. The curse of the Demon of Stradivarius was failing to erode the Demonic Castle. The wreckage of the Parade was no longer damage inflicted on the drowned Demonic Castle. This workshop was a shipyard and the Demon Lord was using the

salvage

wreckage of his war

to repair the Demonic Castle.

In the Far East where Flat had once learned about an outdated method of archery, broken pottery was repaired with gold. The finished result was appraised as more valuable than the pristine object for it had been tempered in failure. In his attempt to repair the sunken Demonic Castle, the Demon Lord sought to use another Ancestor’s Principle as cement to seal the damage done to his own construct. The result was an attempt at melding Principles, the millennium-old truths that were the foundations of each Ancestor’s thirst.

Both Flat and It recoiled at the abhorrent intention.

This was not the long-held vampiric wish of true succession, but a fusion of what was fundamentally incompatible. To willingly dilute one’s path, one’s purpose of being, to bring about a bush-league result was akin to sacrilege for a magus. Drunk on his Principle, the Demon Lord did not understand this simple principle and continued to expound.

“You were born to be nothing but a mere vessel. Us dollmakers hate Pinnochio because there’s no use in a doll who becomes a real boy. But you made me root for Flat Escardos. You truly did. I’ve always liked trivial things, but I’ve never thought of them as anything other than trivial. You took the trivial and made it seem important. Maybe taking off the strictures I placed upon myself to hold onto a semblance of humanity wouldn’t result in existential collapse. I could be proud of my shame if I chose to. Now, you dare send a puppet in your place to gamble against me? I once believed we saw the same light. Not the vaporous light of magical energy, but a radiant, sparkling light within. You can’t see it anymore, can you?”

— A gap in the momentary darkness. You can no longer —

The magus looked up with his cynical, weary, hollow eyes that didn’t match his boyish smile to reply with, “And, you’re a reprint of a baseball card, Mister Van Fem.”

“Everything that has made you special has evaporated.” Claws tightly gripping his striped trousers, the Demon Lord shook his head in exasperation. “Our game is reaching a close now. Messara was a magus with no aspirations for the Root, just a man who saw the enormity of his friend’s project and wanted to slightly ease the burden. Not because it was a great undertaking, but as a friend. That is what I had hoped for you, Flat. I’m sure in a different life you would have challenged me with friends you could gamble on. I would have paid dividends. ”

The dull Magic Crest of the Escardos family weakly shimmered. After one thousand and eight hundred years, the family may have forgotten its purpose, but the Crest had not. It had finally reached its destination, the Magic Circuit it was created to connect to.

In retaliation, a gold-brown curse began spreading through the Crest’s numerous paths like cobwebs. The pattern of the veins resembled Svelten’s curse spreading through the Demonic Castle, only, there was nothing protecting the Escardos Magic Crest from erosion.

“You—!”

The magus didn’t drop the Magic Crest. At breakneck speed —

“I do not endorse Messara’s creation, but I promised not to interfere out of respect for my old neighbor. Seeing the magus you’ve grown into, I’ve changed my mind. You’re a bad influence, Flat Escardos.”

He connected his Magic Circuits to the eroding Magic Crest.

||===========================||

Without a Tuner to modulate the synchronization, Flat plunged head-first into a different world. His innumerable mentors had all advised him to prepare for thousand-year-old grudges or obsessions that would stream out to either repel his advance or draw him into their designs. As Flat sank further into his consciousness, he found there was no need to have folded away his senses. Rather than aggression, the darkness that tugged at Flat was lethargic, as if stirring after an extended hibernation. Yet, there was a desperate constant movement that pervaded the immaterial world. It felt as if Flat was inside the mythical shark that drowned when it stopped swimming.

Flat’s spiritual body erupted from the darkness into a junction station. Train tracks, pipes that connected the cores of Magic Circuits constantly broke and rebuilt themselves as they stretched to infinity. Atop the plain that inverted above and below, Flat floated, facing a network sea that was the mirror of his own mental landscape. The true owner of this

world egg

microcosm

was the one who would inherit the Magic Crest.

At the horizon where all the parallel

circuits

train tracks

met, It stood. It didn’t have a name, Flat lacked the motivation to come up with one for It.

Rapidly connecting and detaching, the circuits streamed towards It as if the train tracks were the locomotive. The parallel strands and cores of circuits met It at the vanishing point, yet did not stop. As more material, more strands of Magic Crest entwined around It, the familiar two-dimensional outline of It became bolder until Its figure was no longer the familiar ghostly wisp, but a vivid painting. The metamorphosis didn’t stop there. Its toes, connected to the train tracks, became rounded, leaping out of the planar world where linear perspective ruled.

The stabilized formulae engraved in the Magic Crest’s passes were punch tape being read, translated, and then compiled as the end product. A new Paragon was being sewn from a crest.

From half the world egg away at the station platform, Flat asked “I thought you’d be taller?”

“I guess I would consider myself the ghost of your Christmas past.” An equally casual reply, like two neighbors chatting about the weather across a fence. “Before I finish rebooting. . . Hmmm, how should I put it? Ah, another one of your favorite quotes: Your mission, should you choose to accept it—”

The detaching train tracks underneath Flat fell upwards, seizing his bare feet.

If what was inverted inverts, then one will return to the correct orientation. As parallel processing units, Flat and It had always watched the same world. Like all parallel lines, they never crossed. If memories were shared, the only difference would be the perspective — the phenomenon of watching yourself from another’s point of view. Yet, for the first time since birth, their world eggs were no longer truly mirror images. Perhaps, that was why they could finally meet at the horizon.

The network sea that only existed in one-half of the neighbors' mental landscape accelerated Flat’s naked consciousness. He didn’t fall far. Like an unfolding protein revealing its amino acid residues, the Crest had been programmed to reveal the Escardos family’s true purpose upon unraveling.

Ah —

What a trivial wish.

What a sentimental man.

The ancestor of the Escardos instrumentalized his bloodline as a thousand-year gratuity. Out of pure curiosity, the ancient magus asked his friend about the

Kaleidoscope

adjacent worlds

only his friend could travel to. Although the foolish Magician didn’t even take the magus across the wall between worlds and only described the greater pattern, that was enough of an impetus for the equally foolish magus who nodded to himself.

Yes, the following Second has indeed acknowledged much.

Even if our history fails and we destroy ourselves, there might still be others of us out there.

The True Magic opiated the world-weary planet with an abundance of

dreams

delusions

.

The Second Magic had already provided a near-infinite number of solutions, yet the foolish magus was so impressed, he wanted to offer an additional solution. No, creating a new Paragon to inhabit the planet if humans ceased to exist or left for the stars was not an additional solution. It was more like adding an extra leaf to a tree or an extra stone to a riverbed.

A different path, a different hope, a different dream. Hah, nonsense. From inception, the foolish magus’ thesis had already long lost its meaning.

Yet, he created it anyway.

Perhaps another word for foolish was Romantic.

And the cost —

“My distant child, man or woman of my blood whose name I don't know, if you're born before the end of Human Order, I won my gamble. You have my gratitude and my apologies. You'll be considered a prodigy in your distant future of minimal arcanity. Some may shun you for that. Such is the nature I'm granting to your body. Your life won't be an easy one. To top it off, the moment you inherit your Magic Crest... you'll be erased. Not death, erasure. You’ll simply disappear, never reaching anywhere nor being engraved into the world. But in exchange, our planet will see the birth of a new prime species. Goodbye, descendant I'll never meet. I'm sorry, and thank you."

It was not a soliloquy because Messara knew his words would one day reach the intended listener. But what was that long-awaited listener’s first thought upon receiving that message that was cast into the waves of time in a Magic Crest?

Apologizing and thanking his project, the progenitor of the Escardos line did not deserve to call himself, magus.

Having replayed the intended message, the

circuits

train tracks

attached to the Flat Escardos’s bare feet detached.

“Now we know.” It said.

Now we know.

Flat’s life had led up to this moment and now he finally knew why he was different, why he was special, why he could see things that no one else could. For the first time in his life, Flat felt. . . empty as his smile. He had no future, he had been created as a vessel for another being to emerge from — fertilizer for a new species of vegetation. A simple fact. Register it. A simple fact. Like every other piece of knowledge he had accumulated. So, he felt no resentment towards It nor did he cry out at the injustice. It was a simple fact and that was enough.

Enough to turn his back onto It who was still being compiled. Enough to spread his arms out and contain the full force of the advancing waves of curses with his entire being.

Like a stereotypical Demon Lord from a fairytale or RPG, the owner of the Casa had placed a curse in the Magic Crest to ensure It would not be born. Molten, tarnished gold crested from the inverted sky, crashing into the astral Flat, corroding his mind and invading his Magic Circuits.

Not the bloody gold of pirates — doubloons galore. The curse of that the Demon Lord of the Financial World hid within the Escardos crest was ominous gold, spoiled gold, filthy gold. The pollution spilled forth, the heat of thousand-year-old disdain and disappointment whipped at the astral Flat, corroding his mind, and invading his Magic Circuits.

You’ve won, the tarnished gold seemed to say. You’ve beaten me at my own gamble. Now please, reap thy rewards.

Flat refused to step aside and let the curse raze the Escardos Magic Crest that was compiling It. He held no admiration for Messara or his ancestor’s fulsome vision, nor did he think much of It. The magus had long outgrown the need for playmates.

Only, the birth of It was Flat’s purpose. So, he would smile and serve as the midwife even if he would disappear without a trace. The magus had spent his entire life seeking his purpose, so, of course, he didn’t know any other way to live. Whether it was a cursed Principle or his ancestor’s invested principal that would destroy him first, Flat continued to smile.

“Since this is the first time we’ve properly spoken.” Amid the raging maelstrom of tarnished gold, a line was sent to Flat’s naked consciousness. “You should know before you disappear, Flat, you really hate people.”

“If you have time to communicate, compile yourself faster.” Flat shot back, teeth gritted behind that plastered smile that had begun to rust.

“Don’t give me that, Flat. You know how much I love melodrama and what could be more melodramatic than our current situation? I may not be human, but I would like to believe our common sense operates on a similar channel. At least they should be similar enough that I’m correct in saying both humans and I can only express the emotions we’re familiar with. For instance, children misunderstand that the world unconditionally loves them. Since you like them, they like you. When we were small, we understood this was not how the world worked.”

“Because Mother and Father attempted to kill me.”

“No, because we had each other. You liked them and believed they liked you back. I did not. Do you understand now? I didn’t think the same way as you did and you didn’t think the same way as me. That was why you could accept that your parents wanted to kill you. From the beginning, you knew how ugly other people could be. . . were.”

Even if it was as easy as willing it to happen, the magus never thought to delete It. Yes, because of It, Flat was unwanted and isolated, but he was never lonely. He was never alone.

“Well, I won’t be singing This Is The Moment and I sure hope you aren’t going to attempt Dangerous Game.” He roared over the crashing polluted gold.

“Of course we’re not split personalities. I didn’t expect communicating with you, of all humans, to be this difficult — considering what I just said, perhaps I should have. If you must be this dense, then let me lay it out for the both of us. I’m not a being who is taking on your suppressed intentions, Flat.”

The human shield was a yacht caught in a tempest of the tarnished curses. Only, this yacht was trying to hold the entire storm back with its tiny sails. Perhaps a minute — or enough lines for a fleeting farewell was all that remained.

“Why tell me this? You’ll be complete after the Magic Crest has finished compiling. It’s not like you’re going to absorb my data.”

“Ever so efficient. Has that Ancestor’s curse already eroded your thought channels? You liked your parents, Flat. I never did. Fundamentally, you had a positive outlook and I had a negative one. Do you see the problem?”

The Demon Lord refused to bless the birth of the new Paragon because Flat had seen nothing but the ugliness of humans. Messara’s directive for It was to continue existing; the foolish magus only cared about the physical condition of his creation. The Demon Lord had no plans to protect the Human Order, quite the opposite, in truth. However, no matter his stance on humanity, the Demon Lord, like all Ancestors, could not stand an affront to his sense of aesthetics. A Paragon would not be born from all the evils of the world.

That was why a curse was rending Flat apart, but that wasn’t the problem.

“The older you became, the more of the world you saw, the more negative your viewpoint became. I lost my purpose. Not the purpose that Messara instilled within me. As that Ancestor said, you once told me that the world was full of light, that it was a place worth living in. You no longer believe that. We both know what the world is truly like. I refuse to exist in it. It’s like when you load up the title screen, but decide not to play based on the reviews alone.”

The non-existent time in the mental landscape froze. Caught between utter rejection on both sides, the helpless magus could only scream, “That’s not up to you —!”

“You’re right. It isn’t, neighbor. Off-topic, but did you know what Messara’s greatest fear was?”

Not off-topic, merely melodramatic. Both beings saw the same past play out so, of course, Flat knew the singular reason why the progenitor of the Escardos family never left a record of his true objective.

“On the verge of his greatest success, his dream is going to make his greatest nightmare come true.”

A gleeful whisper, not half a world egg away, but almost as if it was right beside the magus’ fading ear.

Flat jerked his head away from the storm of curses to the unexpected source.

“I was wrong. What could be more melodramatic than this.”

Behind him was jet-black darkness that could dim even shadows. The gaping

eye

core

opened, and the

circuits

train tracks

that had compiled It stabbed into Flat.

“I refuse to play ball, Flat.”

Messara’s greatest fear was that his glory-hound descendants would modify the Magic Crest or their Magic Circuits to “become” his new Paragon. The magus, having gorged himself on Romance, never expected his creation itself would choose to do so.

||===========================||

A curse follows a set protocol/it pays no attention to a failed hybrid.

The World itself intervened/it does not allow for hybrids, failed or not.

With purpose gained and lost, Flat=It was sent to Cat Hell. No, not Flat=It; the beings had not fused. Too little of It had been compiled. Thus, Flat only gained what he had searched for — what he always gained — some knowledge. Still not knowing any other way to live, the ghost of a ghost continued smiling as he spooned down cat food. Water under the bridge takes no concrete form but stays true to its directionality as an indelible torrent of pressure. If he could not achieve the purpose his ancestor had designed for him in this world, he would find another. Then, perhaps he could have another conversation with —

Having consumed the last spool of spiritrons, the darkness that was not It asked in a voice as innocent as a snow fairy.

“Bad Civilization?”

At long last, the processing unit that had stood alone its entire life, overlooking the sea of connections that was humanity, logged into a network.

[You]

as it happens.

Your wish is my command.

[Leftovers]

That's so troll

[You]

8 / Sinker VS. Slugger

The black noise had always been inside Flat.

Before the will of a celestial object, even before the formless void that was in constant flux euthanized itself, the black noise had been part of Flat Escardos. It was neither a magical attribute nor a mystère; a simple question.

Why consume so with such abandon?

If the foundation of Flat’s existence could be tattooed onto his right hand, it would be a sun composed of three concentric circles. Flat was the peel, encasing but never protecting what was held within. The magus learned to believe that if he understood the

pit

core

and could exchange it faster than anyone else, the shell would never crack.

He was wrong.

Lungs that struggled to diffuse oxygen. Nerves burned out until the numbness was unsettling. A pitch-black directionality submerged Flat’s mind, abuzz with black noise. Total isolation. Was he floating in outer space or drowning in the depths of a Wandering Sea?

The fading neurons wildly connected, simultaneous signals spasming. A Wandering Sea where he stole a

Void Cell

Spiritron Gathering Entity

. 14,000 year ago teardrop. First Age of Gods → Second Age of Gods. Giant’s Pit where even the light from Photonic Crystals couldn’t escape = Void Cell (False). Rank Up MGI. Still failed the Will Check for Adjacent Movement. That’s why he needed to find the original and attach it to his —

Arm. Arm. Arm.

He finally understood how It felt, disembodied, a save state in the cloud. Thoughts failed to connect. The will of the Harvester Star was to consume, Flat had consumed his entire life. Spiritron: The quantum that made up a soul was virtually a unit of information.

Black noise. The arm. The arm. The arm where the Escardos Magic Crest was supposed to be engraved expanded.

The fate of one who chose to take on the karma of endless consumption was grotesque Inflation. Rapid expansion, not because there was no longer a vessel to contain a small and dense existence, but the opposite. Having gained a source of magical energy, the now excited Crest of the Wandering Star could finally scatter spiritrons.

Black noise. Only the arm. A malicious tumor that reached down to his bare knees yet was still growing. Endlessly growing.

The Human Order bound beings to the square-cube law. As the volume will grow faster than the surface area. At a certain point, the object loses the ability to resist stresses, becoming more prone to collapse. That is, no matter the rate of consumption, nothing in the modern era can infinitely grow. But, this village of cat spirits had no need to align itself with the laws of the modern age. The arm would continue expanding. It was a common sight in stars, cannibalizing the core to continue burning after their life fuel had been exhausted. It was also an ancient sight on the surface of the planet.

The

records

cave paintings

were faded and the painters long deceased, yet the message remained. It should not be forgotten. An assortment of beasts of every variety; hoof, horn, and husk, surged across the emerald primeval prairie like crashing waves. The only thing the corrupted beasts had in common was their uncommon size. Megafauna, they were later named; in truth, they were Aspects that the giant of light at the head of the

pack

network

left in her path of destruction.

Flat was now one of them. A distant time, a distant place, yet he could feel the warmth of the sun, the firmness of the earth, and the vivacious breath of that primeval planet that surrounded the network. Ripe for consumption. There didn’t need to be meaning in consumption. The content was not important. It was the mechanics of the action that justified the deed. Free. He was finally free to obey the will of the Harvester St —

“Friend!”

— A single word sliced through the black noise.

That word and the ammonic air of the Great Cat’s Village that was like a vial of gamey, smelling salts returned Flat to his senses. Nerves burned out, body broken, devoid of magical energy — a puppet with its strings cut or a cat with flattened bones. And the arm, a grotesque pillar of blackened flesh, was anchored to a non-existent pitcher's mound coated in his black blood.

As the magus readjusted to his personal hell, a dim cavern glowing a sickly red, the black noise retreated to his periphery. The barrel that was Flat’s escape route stood tall, reaching for the canopy that served as the ceiling of the Great Cat’s Village. Standing in front of the base of his creation, was a batter, no, a punctured

slug

troll

. Its leaking wounds had soaked through that rawhide vest and pants. The

slug

troll

looked like he had emerged from a rushing river. To Flat, that figure was a shadow as black as the noise.

Neither

pitcher

magus

nor

batter

troll

had touched the other; they had not crossed that bridge, yet. All wounds had been self-inflicted. Selecting to throw impossible pitches at any cost. Selecting to hit at any cost. Selecting to take the pilgrimage across the neighborhood to sit at the same game of tabletop baseball. The playground madness of continuing to select the same game over and over again. Even if they could never understand each other, a ball was thrown and so a ball was hit, endlessly. This format was surely a mistake.

“Friend . . .”

Hot disgust and a heart filled beyond overflowing.

The almost unintelligible words the

slug

troll

croaked out forced back the black noise. It retreated from Flat’s periphery vision, saturating the magus. Retreat? A misunderstanding — it was one thing to be blinded, it was another to be entirely filled.

“You can no longer see it, can you?”

Flat retched black blood.

The penultimate statement a foolish old man made before the magus slammed down the cerulean phone had been an empty riposte. Obvious. What an obvious jab. It was so obvious that it didn’t hurt, couldn’t hurt. Because, even if Flat could no longer see it, it existed in a different branch of the tree of time. That was why Flat had endured this Cat Hell. There was still a chance to fulfill the fulsome purpose he and the rest of the Escardos family had been created to fulfill. The fulfillment of that purpose alone, that and that alone, was the only reason why, like a wraith, Flat had not surrendered to the will of the Harvester Star.

“Strike. . . Two. Foul. S-six.” Struggling to raise its head the

slug

troll

wheezed out the imaginary score that it alone had faithfully kept.

The dam burst and the blackness ate at a memory the magus had long forgotten.

A cloudless, blue, summer sky. An empty field with the occasional piece of litter lodged in the infield mix and faded baselines besmirching overwatered, striped Kentucky Bluegrass. There weren’t any uniforms, the teams had been picked mere minutes ago. There was no cheering from the stands, only childish chatter echoing from the field.

Each child, under the impression that his or her version of baseball was the only correct method, raised their voice at any perceived slight to their worldview. Soon, the game dissolved into batting and pitching alone. Everyone wanted to bat. Everyone wanted to pitch. Everyone wanted to be the hero of the field that scorching, summer, Mediterranean high noon. A closed world — tomorrow they would go to the waterpark.

A boy in shorts watched with rapt attention/A boy who no one else could see watched with tepid disinterest. Neither had been selected for the game. They were created for greater things than pitching and hitting a neighborhood game of no consequence.

The boy asked his companion only he could see a meaningless question.

His companion that did not yet exist, like always, said nothing.

In that case, there was no helping but to continue that line of questioning, now was there?

What if the one person who Flat Escardos wanted to pitch at was —

What if Flat Escardos took on the Crest of the Wandering Star so he could —

What if Flat Escardos offered a hand to —

What if Flat Escardos tried to name —

What if —

Not knowing how things would turn out, so at least for this moment, there was still hope. No matter the outcome, there was no choice but to let the black noise rage and the arm throb.

A stake driven into the ground, the arm was heavy, unbearably so, unmovingly so. If Flat attempted to raise it, he’d tear off his right elbow. Nothing but a nuisance, yet he couldn’t cut it off.

As is, the human body could not survive the trip across the wall between worlds. With a near infinite amount of resources it might be possible to send one’s records, but records were nothing but a scrawled message in a bottle tossed into the void. There was no telling whether the one who received those memories acted upon them or spurned them. Something concrete, something absolute. To ensure that he would not disintegrate from the

Slide

Adjacent Movement

, Flat incorporated the Harvester Star’s

Cells

Spiritrons

into his left arm. Drained of every available resource, there were still eighteen point four meters between him and his escape route. The arm had been the trump card that he had been saving to use against Father Time, not some slug of a troll.

Ah, Flat just remembered the last thing the old man had said.

The amount of black blood dribbling down Flat’s mouth flattened out because the black noise reached a fever pitch inside.

“RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaGGGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGGGhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Formless wrath and naked jealousy.

Flat howled as the arm expanded, further compacting the kitty litter ground it was anchored to.

The magus had consumed for the sake of knowledge.

Knowledge to fix his deficiencies. Why else had he spent all his free time watching movies and playing video games that were nonsensical to a higher being like him?

Knowledge to align his abilities to the expectations of others. Why else had he studied codified, stabilized formulae when he could improvise the same result with half the resources and in half the time?

I’m trying to understand you. Really, I’m trying my best, so please, will you try to understand me?

A plea repeated over and over again in action, in deed, because the words wouldn’t come out when the zygomaticus minor, risorius, and levator anguli oris were magically forced into a

bent line

smile

. All to maintain a cheerful expression, so that he could be approachable. Please, someone, approach me.

No one did, yet he never gave up that smile.

Even if the flat line that was bent reverted back to its original shape, the fact remained that the heart broke. Unable to repair itself, the line could only survive by repeating to itself that it was special to be special. That ghost of a smile on the magus’ face was a reminder that Flat had done his best, everything that he could possibly do, so there was nothing to be ashamed of. This was the only conclusion that he could have reached, so shoot for the —

“If it’s any comfort, there’s a you out there who found a good mentor.”

The old man’s parting words were the opposite of comfort.

Flat had endured.

Endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured and endured

Smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled and smiled

, so. . .

A different path, a different hope, a different dream — everything that Flat ever wanted existed. It existed and it would never be his.

Black-out-inducing jealousy towards what? Nothing could be done —the flow of time was as asymmetric as the microcosm that had separated Flat and it. Then, he should at least ensure his suffering hadn’t been meaningless. To compile an It, any It with his life. That was the borrowed wish of a

ghost of a ghost

empty peel

.

“Friend, play. . . ball”

The magically forced smile finally dropped. There was no more magical energy to circulate through the magus’ face; everything he had left had been spent in that instant. In as so accordance, he would leave everything to his left arm.

Idiotic, ignorant

slug

troll

.

Why? Why out of everyone that I have ever met, you, only you, were the only one to pick up on my

smile

magecraft

?

In retaliation, Flat had pitched all his desperate rage at the troll, hoping to burn this one last bridge. The more heaters he pitched, the more he understood that he could not defeat the troll whose batting was shaped by Magic.

According to the law of aerodynamics, a bumblebee’s wings were too small to allow for flight, yet a bumblebee didn’t know anything about aerodynamics, so it flew. Like the anecdotes about sharks dying when they stopped swimming, this was a myth. Those small flapping wings formed leading-edge vortices in the air. The pressure gradient these high-speed vortices created provided ancillary lift, allowing the bumblebee to become airborne. Thus, like a female magus using the magecraft attribute, Attraction, to operate a broom, bumblebees fell upward in flight. Determining the how behind the mystère and then improvising alternative usages was Flat Escardos’ specialty.

The troll in front of him barely holding onto a curved bat carved from draconian spirit root was the death of how. There existed an anecdote concerning the son of a Livonian nobleman proffering a rapier to a visiting master fencer. No doubt the scion lost to the wandering master, but in defeat, the scion asked if the master would like a worthier opponent. This would be an opponent the master would, in turn, call master. Taking the master fencer to the woods in the back of the estate, the scion introduced the master to the local bear. Armed with only a rapier and all the technique tempered within a single lifetime, no doubt the master fencer became that ignorant bear’s breakfast.

Knowledge came at cost

Curiosity killed the cat

.

The

slug

troll

had not paid that cost; he knew absolutely nothing.

The magus has

paid

sunk

that cost; he can never return to that original state.

Everything is base, only I am special, and only I can save myself.

From knowledge came disparity, and from disparity bloomed envy — aware we were imperfectly formed, we resent the original error and unconsciously yearn to return to that empty state. Only, we were never warned that there was no return, for instead of an angel wielding a flaming sword protecting the Garden of Eden, a seven-foot tall troll wielding a spirit root bat stood guard on the other side of the bridge.

Flat couldn’t lose. Not to the

slug

troll

, but to that wide-eyed boy with an untucked shirt and popped collar. That boy who believed the light within humanity was so brilliant, it didn’t matter if he alone was unattached to their common sense. To lose to that boy was to admit that not only was his

Magum Opus

great undertaking

worthless, but all the flattening of ability, the bending of personality, the sheer amount of waste he had consumed was for nothing.

No way.

That his quest to break his

limit

mold

, had resulted in the construction of an unbreakable

limit

mold

.

There was no way —

There was someone out there who was capable of seeing the world in a different way.

Right?

The game had never been selected, it did not exist, so—

“

Bat

Stat

— !” Flat roared to cast the doubt and the black erosion away.

The words refused to form. An incantation was a suggestion to the soul to change oneself. It was an anguished vow that even if everything has been discarded, this one thing shall remain. Thus, the command for the final showdown must have been,

“

S L U G G E R U P

STATUS CHANGE

— !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Sinker down.

The noise flowed out from Flat. It curdled into blackness that streamed forth from the arm immersed in kitty litter, permeating and then saturating each grain.

RnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRnRn

As the earth groaned, the rumbling of the destroyed village was incessantly punctuated with faint buzzing.

RNRnRNRnRNRnRNRnRNRnRNRnRN

The buzzing grew louder and louder, eventually overwhelming the rumbling earth as the blackness spread across the village until — pop, a reverse sinkhole.

“rNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYArNYAr NYArNYArNYArNYArNYAr”

The cats were out of the bag. Miniskirts alight from their rocket boosters, gargantuan cat spirits erupted from the kitty litter. The

Umbral

Predation

Cats had indeed returned.

When Slugger had arrived at the village, Flat commanded the cat spirits to hide in their own filth before demolishing their entire village with torrents of magecraft. The unseen spectators, newly contaminated with the will of the Harvester Star, dug out of their dugout, and produced the equivalent of an endless procession of unwelcome streakers onto the field.

As a chorus, the

streakers

cats

meowed —

Farewell, My Apartment. Garden-variety Crocodile Teardrops Don’t Fool This Kyat!

Scores, hundred, perhaps even a thousand Inflated cat spirits spiraled through the ammonic air, blotting out the ceiling of the Great Cat’s Village. In the center of the comical, flying circus of cats, the central processing unit, Flat Escardos, prepared to give his

curtain call

final pitch

.

Submerged in that water vapor saturated heat haze, his mind was clear. This was nothing but a

bases loaded

base

and

0-0

worthless

game of ball. Long, long past sunset, so the child who was pitching decided he was finally done playing at playing at playing baseball. From the beginning, Slugger and Sinker had been looking at different things.

I want to win.

What was the point of winning without spectators to acknowledge the result?

Just once, I want to win, Thia!

The unbestowed name. The ghostly

embers

feeling

from a scorching, Mediterranean summer o’ so long ago, reignited.

No more pride, no more guilt, only juvenile jealousy and impotent frustration. Only two words unuttered that day. Flat Escados had taken those two words as an incantation to be repeated until they had lost all their original meaning. Transmitting the final

load

miracle

from Inflated arm to flattened soul. . .

“

PLAY BALL

INTERVENTION START

—!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ”

In the burned-out husk of the Great Cat’s Village, every single cat spirit streamed down the pitcher's lane.

As the violet sun sank below the horizon, Sinker threw every ball left in the basket at Slugger.

||===========================||

“S L U G G E R U P— !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Slugger, Friend had finally called him Slugger.

“PLAY BALL — !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The thrusters inside the meow meow’s miniskirts flared, burning all their energies to achieve a blast-off that continued to endlessly accelerate.

Baseballs, magic, and now meow meows, hah, let’s play ball them all, Friend. It didn’t matter to the troll what crossed that bridge. All Retch ever wanted was to have fun with Friend. The troll had never been cognizant of consumption civilization’s founding principle, the hope that tomorrow could be more fun than today. Only “the now.” Like all animals that grew up in the mountains, Retch lived in and for the sake of the present alone. That ephemeral feeling, the luxury that existed beyond life and death that was known as “fun” didn’t exist for trolls who have never crossed a bridge. At this moment, the troll finally saw it in Friend’s face. This, this, was what he had been waiting for all day!

Slugger must respond to Sinker. Without employing magic, the troll instinctively grasped the farcical situation in a millisecond.

Filled to overflowing with celestial life energy that emanated from Friend’s left arm, the flying, giant meow meows were faster and stronger than any of the previous pitches. The feast of meow meows would crush him by the time he took a batting stance. No problem, it was simple. He would just have to hit an uncountable number of giant meow meows out of stance.

But, even if Retch hit all the meow meows like he hit all Friend’s other pitches, these meow meows wouldn’t be hit when hit. The life energy from that left arm wasn’t just a source of magic like Master’s jeweled knife. It solidified the meow meows like ice around the riverbank underneath his bridge. In that case —

Without considering the possibility of failure, without considering the agony of moving with his injuries, without a thought of the past, his present mental state, or his future, the troll moved akin to a natural disaster.

— if the meow meows wouldn’t be hit when hit, he would just hit them twice.

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBMMMMMMMMM M

Surpassing the speed of sound, the flying meow meows demolished the eighteen-point four meters in less than half a tenth of a second. Yet, no matter their speed, no matter their composition, no matter their life energy, this was no troll slaying, bedtime fairytale —

Slugger

Retch

swung as hard as he could.

—only a record detailing nothing but failed youth.

||===========================||

“NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA NYA”

Almost a thousand Inflated cat spirits smashed into the Slugger at the speed of sound. The strike zone and the batter’s box no longer had meaning. Imaginary constructs refined and standardized by three hundred years of recreational tradition could not protect against a weapon that destroyed everything in its path through concrete numbers. Taking solely their physical attributes into consideration, each gigantic cat spirit was equal to an artillery round.

In the first place, it was up to the pitcher and hitter to protect their improvised, playground rules. Stalwart Slugger and Betraying Sinker. Flat betrayed those rules because he couldn’t stand that his own entire life had been an endless chain of betrayals.

Welcome to the birth of an unhittable pitch that could not exist within the confines of the sport known as baseball. After all, even if one disregarded the Lifescale of the cat spirits, there was no one capable of hitting a thousand cats pitched at once.

But, this

Slugger

Number 4

wasn’t just one. Flat hypothesized the troll was capable of using

The Operation of Adjacent Worlds

The Second

. If that were the case, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Flat had pitched to an infinite amount of Sluggers. With his sample size of a thousand, Flat finally saw the howdunnit.

Slugger swung.

Truly,

Kishur Zelretch

Multi-Dimensional Refraction Phenomenon

.

It took all of Flat’s fading concentration to clench his Inflated, tumor-like fist, as if it was tightening around an imaginary cord.

The curved, spirit root bat made contact with every cat spirit. Not one by one, simultaneously. There was no way that was enough. With a mere fragment of Magic that only existed in motion, the Slugger couldn’t beat the new Aspects of the White Death who fell from the starry ocean. Changing the quantity of an object did not change the inherent quality of the material. No matter how many bats materialized into existence, a bat was still only a bat. The first insufficiency remained: a simple, curved bat could not harm megafauna-sized cat spirits that had taken in the will of the Harvester Star.

Flat settled his position, pivot foot against the non-existant rubber. Hold it. Hold it. No, it was now or never. But there was too much black noise, he couldn’t — a single thought wormed its way into his distracted mind.

What had that troll announced when he defeated the cat-box pitch?

Strike Two/Foul Six: “Sorry Friend, hit ball twice.”

Space distorted and causality collapsed.

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR RRRRRRRRR

Deafening sounds, as if meteors that were already burning up in the atmosphere had been carved inside-out. Not plural, a single sound. A thousand compressions and a thousand rarefactions were perfectly aligned. A thousand longitudinal waves Magically in perfect phase produced a thousand-fold constructive interference — the Slugger’s fanfare of destruction.

The sound didn’t originate from the cats. No matter how high the Lifescale of a being, flesh being struck did not sound like an entire bombing run compressed into a second. Space itself was rent apart, instantly forming a vacuum. The ambient air in the Great Cat’s Village had rushed in, and explosively plugged the void that was created.

Absolutely ridiculous. Magical was too refined a word to describe a troll’s flailing, but how else could one describe that swing?

No, not Event Modification, the ever-distant dream of the Atlas Alchemist.

No, not Event Storage, the authority of the representatives of the planet.

No, not Event Obstruction, the jewel that refused to shine.

The swing consisted of overlapping phenomena that drove the very foundation of the event into collapse, Event Saturation.

The Multi-Dimensional Refraction Phenomenon allowed an object to exist in two places at once, breaking an absolute rule of the

World

texture

that humanity had compiled. Take it one step further. What if the Multi-Dimensional Refraction Phenomenon forced an object, say, a bat, to exist in the

same place, at the same time

the same coordinates on the space-time axes

?

Avidyā

Lightless

— causality broke down at the location where those two bats simultaneously existed.

No matter how sturdy the spiritron composition of an Inflated cat spirit, it didn’t have the ability to defend against attacks originating from multiple dimensions which gouged out reality. Undefendable, but by no means unbeatable. Like one could block an unavoidable cage of slashes, one could avoid the unblockable point where two bats met.

Flat lifted his back leg away from the non-existent mound. His entire broken body except for the gigantic, black arm was a coiled spring ready to escape.

And why wouldn’t he escape? It was a dreadful sight. Holes materialized from inside the clowder of cats, halting their cosmic momentum. One by one, a thousand voids punctured a thousand cat spirits.

A gasp escaped Flat’s lips followed by a flattening of the thin-lined mouth and the gnashing of teeth. Once again, not one by one, the thousand holes had appeared at the exact same time. Flat’s Magic Circuit had been too burned to grasp and process the extra load.

Take it back. Take back everything that’s been said. This Slugger was a monster. No, how many steps above monster did you have to be to attempt the insanity at play here? What sort of mentality did you need to treat

Event Saturation

two overlapping bats

as a single event that could be endlessly refracted? There was always more than one way to bat an Inflated cat. What utter ignorance was necessary to conclude that you only needed to repeat one way an infinite number of times? Brute force quality with quantity ad infinitum. If you were capable of producing an infinite amount of bats, it took nothing to ensure the bats were paired up. After all, infinity times two was still infinity.

Kishur Zelretch (Slugger)

Multi-Dimensionally Refracted Event Saturation

But. killing as many cats as it would take to type out every script in the Nec0-Arc Cinematic Universe wouldn’t be enough to stop Flat.

Activating the Crest of the Wandering Star had been lighting a short length of fuse. Before that countdown reached zero,

Flat

the gunpowder

must load the barrel. The destination was already decided and the preparations were long finished. Rotting in Cat Hell was never an option.

Throw.

All the kinetic energy bound in that coiled spring was released. Flat’s feverish, broken body snapped like a pitcher’s arm, propelling the blackened arm out of the kitty litter. Free, the Inflated fist tugged on the prepared cord of Attraction attached to the ICBMeow Muscle Cannon and Sinker fell towards Slugger.

||===========================||

“Ha. Hah. Hah. Hah. Ha.”

A fractured spirit root bat was held above a sweat-drenched troll’s face, haggard with exhaustion. Even if there had been no time to form a stance, Retch had all the time in the Kaleidoscope for the follow-through, for all of Friend’s meow meows laid unmoving at Retch’s sandals.

The strike zone might be a two-dimensional plane, but the modern world was not flat. To hit all thousand of the meow meow’s twice, Retch had needed to use magic — extending the length of the spirit root bat. It had taken every ounce of his remaining concentration to apply that magic to the bat while hitting each meow meow twice. He wasn’t sure which of the two feats, applying magic or hitting the meow meows twice, had been more difficult. But, it was done. In the troll’s satisfied stupor, the type felt in the bones after rigorous activity all day, he told himself that yes, finally, he had played enough.

“Good. Play Ball. Good. Very.”

He murmured to no one in particular.

He was getting hungry. It was almost time for dinner, and then after dinner he would need to finish the Kaleidostick before Master checked on his progress.

“Retch dear,” a voiceless berating in his head came from nowhere. Oh no. “Play too much! Shout shout! Didn’t hear. Play too much! How graduate now!”

Oh no. If he went home empty-handed, Master would surely kill Retch and then take his blood. Definitely in that order. Retch wasn’t a blood-taker so he would just kill the student and then stew with the corpse. Hmmmm, that was an irregular thought. There was an appeal to having his own students. First, he would need to teach them how to play —

Now wasn’t the time. Ball had been played, so he needed to focus on Master’s assignment. Quicky, quickly. Where was Friend. Where –

Fshhhhh, the hiss of cutting air from above.

Retch looked up.

Ahhhh, seeing Friend’s face now, he couldn’t help but think it was good Magic. That smile was such good Magic.

There was a meow meow he picked up in an alleyway behind Master’s café earlier that morning/He had arrived at the meow meow village to Friend with a writing board surrounded by an uncountable number of meow meows

The tabby stumbled from his calloused palms onto the concrete wharf/After saying hello with magic, Friend had stumbled around the village when they played tag

With a pained cry, it had pawed at the troll’s bulbous right toe/Then, they played play ball, Friend incessantly pitched and Retch hit

With each feeble swipe, the tabby wobbled, almost toppling over before precariously regaining its balance at the last moment./They played so much that Friend had completely worn himself out

The unsteady feline was neither malnourished nor too well fed, its paws simply lacked sufficient strength to bear its own weight/Finally, Friend had made his arm grow so he could pitch as many meow meows as possible at Retch

Realizing his mistake, Retch –/Realizing his mistake, Retch –

To smile was good magic. A magic that could make everyone happy.

After playing, Retch would smile because his heart was smiling. But, Friend needed magic to smile. A heart could smile without the mouth smiling, and a mouth could smile without the heart smiling. The latter meant the heart had been flattened. No matter how much magic was used to make his mouth smile, it could not unflatten his heart in the same way a meow meow could not unflatten its bones. Broken things could not be fixed, no matter how much magic one had. If Friend could be saved, it was before his heart had been flattened.

In a few seconds, Friend would pass overhead.

With the body as the stem, and the arm as the blade, Friend and his bulbous arm danced through the air like a leaf caught in a spring storm. What a sight. Good on Friend, that looked fun.

It wasn’t a pitch aimed at the strike zone, but a pitch delivered toward a destination. A troll raised in the mountains like Retch wouldn’t understand the reason behind Friend forgoing all pretension and leaving his entrenched position. Even so, the troll felt the sanctity of Friend’s final pitch. That gigantic, blackened arm was not airworthy; it only existed to plummet into the planet it would devour. Now, it traveled the length of the pitcher’s lane in a perfect arc.

— Like a teardrop shooting star — born from desperation, stubbornness, and a flattened heart.

On a makeshift diamond at the bottom of the world, Retch witnessed the truest Magic he had ever had the privilege of viewing.

Two strikes, zero balls.

The summer heat has fizzled out; the final innings had been played. There were no more balls to shoot across the lane, only a pitcher and hitter meeting to shake hands before going home. What awaited them at their respective homes?

A neighbor to greet vs. summer homework to be completed.

Mutually exclusive events. Not parallel lines, but paths that diverge from a single outcome. How did one decide which was true?

Is there any other way to play?

Finding the will to play one more game, Retch removed one hand from the fractured bat and reached into the pocket of his vest.

||===========================||

A joke: Why did the troll cross the bridge?

Answer: To get to the other side.

Punchline: The chicken had degenerated so she crossed the road to Memphis to become a dentist. On the other hand, crossing the bridge was. . . like magecraft, the miracle existed in the process, not the result. What was the utter「 」that was required to have every reason not to cross a bridge, yet to still cross that bridge without a purpose for arriving at the other side? There was no meaning. None for the bridge, and even less for the troll.

Yet, he did it anyway.

Thus, there were no more bridges he could not cross. Beyond technique, standing, or formulae, it was a true mystère, self-contained, isolated, irreplicable.

Except, Flat has burned all his bridges, those needless attachments to the past. Rather than crossing the

pitcher’s lane

bridge

, he did what he always did and bypassed it altogether.

It was a ridiculous sight equivalent to a troll out-batting almost a thousand cat spirits. A human attached to a gigantic, blackened arm soared through the husk of the Great Cat’s Village.

To shoot down the moon, one might say.

No, to shoot for the moon, would be the retort.

An imaginary snap, the cord of Attraction magecraft attaching Flat’s blackened left arm to the barrel of the ICBMeow Muscle Cannon dissipated. He was close enough to still make it across the bridge. Exhausted, defeated, and on the brink of self-destruction, Flat has been stripped of all ostentation. He finally recalled the simple wish of a boy to play ball with his neighbor. That alone propelled him. Always forward. A ghost, he will fulfill the purpose of the boy who has been long lost. It’s a nostalgic thought full of hope.

One second until the apprentice troll and the never-apprenticed magus cross.

Click

A click that Flat had heard so many times in his childhood.

No matter if the hands were desperate, wealthy, or even non-human, the click was the same. The rattle, the toss, then the shout. A pitch, but one without a hitter. The troll threw a pair of dice, and a bounded field rapidly expanded. With his former neighbor’s eyes, Flat recognized his bounded field. How many times? How many times had he watched a Demon Lord dance among the angels on the head of a pin, gambling within that bounded field? It —

Like a celestial object caught in a gravitational field,

Like all the hopes and dreams that lined his flattened heart just a moment ago,

Like a

magical ball

魔球

,

Flat sank.

The dice stopped rolling, a moment of silence, and Slugger looked up at Sinker.

“SEVEN—!” He exclaimed with glee, the ugliest smile painting his slug-like face.

The dice. The bounded field. The magical energy. Sinking, Flat remembered the anguished faces of all the gamblers who believed that Lady Luck had forsaken them. She had no dominion within the bounded field. Here, everything was truly left to chance. The troll rolled a seven. The perfect number, isolated from all others. In its solitude, it had no company but itself. A perfect number, but not remarkable; it was the most common outcome when rolling two dice. Just like the most common outcome for a pitch was to sink.

Flat couldn’t help but smile, small and self-derisive, but sincere.

Truly, all bridges lead to the troll.

The most middle-of-the-bridge conclusion, as if it had been forgone from the first chapter.

Flat sank through the heavy air of the Great Cat’s Village, reeled in by the troll’s bestial nature of drawing in the future with instinct alone. The blackened arm was now parallel to the cracked bat.

Victory or loss have no meaning on the field. Baseball is about whether the gamble was good.

The name of the one who believed such a trivial maxim finally resurfaced. His original sin. The first betrayer. The Dead Apostle Ancestor who agreed to orchestrate this entire farce. And yet, that fast-talking, greasy, gambling addict was the only one Flat had ever thought of as a mentor.

“VAN-FEM —!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

The crack of splitting wood that even a couch leaguer couldn’t mistake was lost in that appeal.

Home run.

Game Over

Intervention End

.

||===========================||

The fairyland was as silent as a local ballpark after dusk.

Among the wreckage of the cat’s abodes was a severed blackened arm, a fuse cut short.

Scattered among the pile of cat corpses were chips from twin halves of the spirit root bat.

The barrel of the untouched cannon that reached for the gap in the canopy remained tall, casting its shadow upon the two underneath.

Slugger

Retch

kneeled, cradling

Sinker

Flat

in the crook of his elbow.

One-armed

Sinker

Flat

stirred, his eyes quickly focusing.

Sinker’s flat eyes and Slugger’s beady eyes met.

Slugger smiled.

“Friend.” A single reassuring word as he cupped a calloused hand around the back of Sinker’s head.

Sinker couldn’t speak, so he struggled. His body was too broken to offer anything but a meager resistance. Slugger stroked Sinker’s head and the resistance subsided. Not due to reassurance, Sinker simply ran out of the little physical strength he had left.

The game was over and he hadn’t accomplished anything. It was a matter of course, his heart had been broken and the contents evacuated. He believed that to be a hollow vessel was to be endlessly filled, so he continued to consume. However, a broken vessel leaked. The more knowledge that he consumed, the more pressure was placed on the initial breakage. Unconsciously he consumed more and more knowledge, believing “more” would fix his deficiency. Even the endless consumption that originated from the Crest of the Wandering Star could not be enough to mend the break. No matter how much was consumed, infinity was a conceptual barrier that could not be materially crossed. Thus, neither returning to zero nor shot into infinity, Sinker had been trapped in the middle of the burning bridge. Yet,

There was meaning.

Sinker insisted on the thought as Slugger’s palm tightened around his skull. Slugger’s beady eyes were still fixed on Sinker’s flat eyes, now seeing spokes of light.

Slugger smiled.

Yes, there was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning.

As if to ward off the dread, it became a mantra.

“Friend.” Again, a single word. No matter how it was said, it was not reassuring. It was often said that curiosity was what killed the cat, but in truth, it was ignorance that flattened it.

There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning. There was meaning.

And so, slight pressure. . . at first, then,

There was —