Act 3, Chapter 116: The very slow rush

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday), past 11:00 a.m.—approximately 5 hours and 21 minutes remain until the record time is lost

Elle Erikson

When people finally stopped complaining about being awakened by a shouting rhinoceros wearing a man's skin, we ate a quick meal before Laurent teleported us back onto the platform my spiders had woven over the tongue-filled sinkhole beneath the Eiffel Tower.

Immediately afterward, I summoned a fresh batch of web-slinging minions, each ordered to bind the tongues beneath us and build a bridge toward the far corner of the tower, where a staircase rose within one of its legs.

“You have more?” Piotr asked, watching them leap from the platform onto the slick, writhing muscles covering the ground below.

“As long as I have Authority and they're painted on the pages, I can summon more,” I lied, mixing in just enough truth to make it believable. In reality, of course, they first had to be made inside the Domain, or pulled from a memory if I was willing to sustain the cost of doing so, thanks to my newest development.

As they ventured out, each trying to do its own thing in an uncoordinated manner, I expanded my aura around them all and imposed something new upon them. Become the building of the bridge—I pictured an art installation where dozens of small arachnids came together as a single organism to build a crossing for their species over a turbulent river out of human flesh.

Shadowlight linked them together, just as my imagination and intent had. At first, it seeped from each creature as a faint mist. Then, once it formed an invisible web connecting them all, they shimmered briefly and immediately began working with far greater efficiency.

Their labor embodied nature's will to reclaim what humanity had built. We were the cancerous growth upon the face of the earth, forever trying to consume everything around us. The spiders weaving their webs across the tongues became the perfect artistic metaphor for that struggle.

They wove around one another, leaping over strands already in place. Some focused on reinforcing the stronger outer supports, while others concentrated on spinning the finer webbing between them, creating a stable surface that would make our crossing easier.

“They work pretty quickly,” Kito observed. “Well done.”

“Thank you. In about fifteen minutes, we'll have our passage,” I replied, watching those creatures reenact, through the intricate dance I had already envisioned, the craftsmanship of real spiders and their struggle to survive in the world ruled by us.

Alexandra May

“You're rushing... when you should... be going slowly,” Ani's disembodied voice reached me as I struggled against the currents of Shadowlight. “I'm trying to keep... Discord at bay, but he... insists on making everything... as difficult as possible.” She struggled to form coherent thoughts. In truth, I wasn't hearing words at all. Meaning reached me as raw concepts that my mind instinctively translated into language.

“Slow is fine...” I replied through gritted spiritual teeth. “When you're... start...ing.” The immense pressure of readjusting the links through sheer force of will bore down on me. It felt as though I had to delicately move a single strand of hair that somehow weighed a hundred tons.

The entire process consisted of pushing my Authority through a link and checking whether it resonated at the same frequency along its entire length. If it began vibrating one way and ended another, I traced it back from the endpoint to where the change occurred. Then, with nothing but my will, I corrected that section before moving on, repeating the process until the entire strand was perfectly aligned. At the same time, trapped within this spiritual version of myself in the soulspace, I could hear every other strand around me, each playing either in tune or out of tune. It was bearable, but just slightly.

“Being faster is... better,” I continued, focusing on the link that made my prosthesis function as a real leg. “Once you're... good enough.” I added fixing the last part of the problem in that strand.

[One of the worst culprits has been dealt with. This should lessen the occurrences of freezes substantially already.] Anansi said.

“That healing Ali enacted initially was what caused most of my freezes at the start. It was only after Peter unknowingly applied his Authority and removed your attempt that the healing itself stopped being the problem.”

“Healing doesn't... want... to be a slave... either. He resists everything... but what is absolutely... necessary to keep... you... alive.” She mentioned and I understood how Discord latched onto the healing process and used it to break me.

“Do you see now how being too good can become a problem?” I asked, taking a brief reprieve from the constant corrections. Outside this liminal place, I could feel my body breathing normally, moving on its own without any interruptions or regressions.

“My actions... were not... good at all, Alexa. Self-preservation is not... a noble goal... especially when you... subjugate others to... your will.” I felt remorse flowing from her.

“Fine. You win. Talking to you is kind of difficult. Do you remember the time when you were human?”

“Most of my intellect... had been... turned into... an Anima.”

[I am sorry about that. I can feel her only through you now. It is so strange, being separated from what I was and not being able to perceive it on my own.]

You are part of me, Anansi. Talking and semi-independent, but still part of me. I thought back to her before turning my attention to Ali again.“I wonder if I could give you a chance to reconnect with Anansi on some level. Well... scratch that thought. I'm sure I can do it. It's just a matter of properly designing the identity of such a creation, of deciding what truth it ought to convey. As it happens, I even have a proper vessel for something like that.”

“Focus on... fixing... yourself.” I would've rolled my eyes if I'd had them in here, but instead I took a breath with the body my spirit had left inside the Harp and directed my attention toward the Shadowlight link that belonged to Gertrude.

Elle Erikson

I turned back to take one last glance at the bridge spun by my creatures. They had already been sent back into the Domain, but their creation remained, taking on a final shape I hadn't anticipated.

It stretched between the initial platform and the base of the Tower's leg where I now stood. Despite being made of reinforced spider silk, it looked remarkably like something a higher intelligence would have built. In the middle of the construction, the web-slingers had climbed over one another and upward, anchoring their weaves to the ceiling. Somehow they had either circumvented the tongues above or glued their silk directly onto them. That allowed them to create two towering columns that served as pylons, from which graceful side arches supported the bridge high above the writhing muscles below. And they had built all of that so quickly, I felt nothing but pride and amazement.

“Good job, El.” Patricia Paulding patted me on the back.

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“Yeah, let's go,” Piotr added, taking the last step off the bridge onto solid ground. His arm found its way around my shoulders, urging me forward and making Pat wince at the unnecessary familiarity he showed me. I grabbed his wrist, gently removed his arm, and stepped away from the Piotr plus Patricia equation. The latter seemed to understand immediately. At least her eyes lit up with understanding.

“Oh, don't be such a prude,” Milo complained, suggesting he wasn't quite as quick to grasp the situation. Some people were simply slower with these things, but after enough rejections he should catch on. Hopefully.

“Piotr,” I whispered, making sure my voice sounded anything but breathy or intimate. “I enjoy the camaraderie, but, most likely unbeknownst to you, Patricia has taken an interest in you and developed some feelings. I don't want to end up in the middle of yet another pair in this group.”

“What?” he answered far louder than necessary, turning everyone's heads toward us. We stood before the steel lattice of the Tower's leg, facing doors that looked more like the vault entrance to a bunker than anything that could reasonably hide a staircase.

“What what?” Patricia asked.

“Oh... nothing.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks turning noticeably red. “I was reprimanded for my joviality.”

“Good,” Pat replied.

“How do we open this?” Kito interrupted the useless bickering with a simple question. He was already trying to turn the wheel at the center of the vault door, but it refused to budge.

“With proper strength!” Piotr declared, adding both hands to the effort in an attempt to hype himself up. It proved just as ineffective and earned laughter from the rest of the team, myself included. “Obviously, this requires some batting.”

“No!” Liana shouted. “Knowing your power, you'd destroy the door along with the entire leg, and it would all come crashing down on our heads.” I wished I could agree with her less. I also wished I could simply solve the problem with a painted hole. Restrictions were put in place for a reason, though, and I welcomed the challenge of figuring out new solutions on the spot.

“Lio, if you could be so kind.” I turned to my lóng, who caught on without further words, explanations, or even thoughts conveyed through Anansi. He became intangible and slipped through the door as though it wasn't there in the first place. No more than four heartbeats later, he stuck his head and the front half of his body back through, still in his Shadowlight form.

“No mechanism on the other side, humans,” he declared, his snakelike tongue running over his snout to catch a fly that had somehow found its way in here. He devoured it a moment later.

“Can you make something you touch phase through with you?” Laurent asked, raising a finger as though he were in a classroom.

“No,” Lio answered.

“Merde,” Tien cursed in French. “I hoped you'd be able to make a photo on the other side.”

“Can't you just edit the door away? Just remove it?” I asked.

“No. I don't know what's on the other side.” While we discussed it, Liana tried something on her own, sending ants crawling into the crevices beneath the threshold.

“Lio, can you paint what you can see on the other side?” I asked.

“Of course.” He replied, hissed through his snout and turned green at the same time.

“Would that work for you, Laurent?”

“Depending on how good the depiction is.”

“The best!” Liora slipped out through the matter of the doors, hovered above the concrete floor, caught the tuft of his tail with his front paws, and began painting the steel staircase he'd seen on the other side. He started with vague shapes, then gradually added details: slime coating the railing, tongues hanging loose from the opposite wall, bolts holding everything together, even the metal mesh flooring.

“That's fantastic,” Patricia encouraged my sky serpent, though truth be told, everyone except Liana was watching intently as his masterpiece slowly became as realistic as a photograph. At some point, Liana walked over to the wheel that opened the vault. She placed one hand on it and, with almost no effort, pushed it. The wheel spun with the touch of a single finger.

“What the fuck?” Piotr voiced my thoughts, though with considerably more force than I would've. Lia caught the wheel, pulled, and swung the doors open for us.

“It appears that ants are quite capable burglars,” she said with a shrug, then made a small curtsy that invited the bigger men to go first. Piotr accepted it as a personal challenge and shoved Kito aside just as he was about to step through and rushed past the man.

“First!” he shouted, jumping onto the staircase, which looked almost exactly like what Lio had been painting. The dragon in question stopped his artistic process and looked at Liana. She met his gaze and held it for a second. Instead of hissing at her, however, he bowed before gliding past her to quickly rejoin Piotr at the front.

“Good idea, Elle.” Liana's lips curled into a half-smile for barely a millisecond. She was happy to have beaten me to the solution, but she was above boasting about it. I liked that.

Alex Weatherlight

I sat in front of a single light card, as had already become tradition whenever I tried to do something new with my Authority control.

Binding Authority to an object wasn't something I'd never tried. On the contrary, I had attempted it a few times already, but I quickly grew frustrated with the results and abandoned it as something not worth pursuing. This time, however, I promised myself I'd try just a little harder, knowing that all I had to do was let go of my power.

The card in front of me stared back like the middle finger of some cosmic hand of fate. It shone with a column of light that stretched from its surface all the way to the skylight roof of the Art Palace, but the link between us was still there.

“I don't need this power anymore,” I said aloud, hoping that if the Universe wasn't attuned to my thoughts, it might at least listen to spoken words. “Take it... card. Be the light.” The card remained as reliant on me as everything else. It waited for me to reclaim what I'd just given it at any moment of my choosing.

A knock against the doorframe pulled my attention away. “May I come in?”

“Of course, Sophie,” I replied, once more trying to force my thoughts into simply letting go of the power. I don't need it. Keep that Authority for yourself. You can shine for all eternity. I don't care.

“Is everything okay?” she asked after seeing me sigh in response to yet another failure.

“When you offer your Authority to change an object's identity or animate it, you're given a choice. You can keep it connected to yourself until you decide to take the Authority back and it becomes what it was before the change, or you can simply let go and change the object forever, without any way to reclaim that Authority. It's called binding Authority. I suck at it.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well... not suck. Sucking would imply I do it badly. I can't do it at all. Zero proficiency. Zero.” I made a circle with my thumb and index finger before pushing myself away from the desk.

“Nick mentioned it briefly. He said you have problems with it.”

“You don't?”

“No. I had a few issues keeping my Authority unbound at first, but I can do that now as well.”

“So you had the opposite problem?”

“Briefly.” She smiled and it was difficult to remain jealous of her success.

“I've seen your creations, Sophie. It's incredible how differently you understand identity and how much that changes what you can do with the magic offered by the Domain. It really is dependent on the user and their perception to a degree I never imagined.”

“Right?” she laughed. “But now that you know, you can do it too.”

“Not really. I still can't quite believe my magic would work that way. I tried, without much success. Not to mention I suck at arranging flowers. And this time 'suck' is the right word, because at least I know how to put them together, but the meaning behind it... yeah, that's just superstition to me. It goes completely over my head.”

“You know that ideas and beliefs shape both magic and Ideworld. Why is that one so hard for you to believe?”

“I don't know. When it comes to flowers, it's so silly that my mind just refuses to click with it.” I shrugged. “Might as well add it to the pile of easy things I just can't do.” I air quoted and immediately after pointed at the light card, which stopped casting its pillar of illumination the moment I willed it to.

“You'll get there. I, on the other hand, can't imagine splitting myself into multiple bodies, no matter how much I bend my mind around it. So maybe it's just a marathon for both of us instead of a sprint?”

“Could be,” I sighed, once again willing the card to embrace its new identity. It stubbornly clung to my soul, remaining connected even though I didn't want it to. Never before was a light in front of me so dark. “What brings you to me?” I changed the subject.

“I came to tell you that I think I'm ready to leave the Domain, and Nick is coming with me. I need to bring some order back to the office, but I also can't wait to see the girls again. Both my two witches and my more mundane, though no less crazy, girls.” She smiled, closed her eyes, and raised her shoulders, drawing her arms close in a cute gesture that showed she could barely contain herself.

“I miss them too. Luckily, I'll finally be able to join you on Earth once I'm done realigning all the links. Thanks, in no small measure, to you.”

“It is I still who is in your debt Alexa,” she addressed me as a whole. “and like we contracted I will pay it back. Consider this the first installment.”