Act 3, Chapter 125: If not us

Day in the story: 1st February (Sunday)

Elle Erikson

“Elle, it’s good to see you,” Alexandra said the moment I appeared inside the Domain.

While Alex, Maya, and Gertrude fought their way through the hordes of nightmares summoned by the archmage on Edge of Tomorrow island, she and Ali-Ani presided over what looked like the world’s strangest emergency art workshop.

More than a dozen groups of minions worked across the grass of our meadow. Spiders darted between sheets of paper with brushes made of their legs, some painting broad washes of color while others followed behind them with absurdly tiny lines—adding whatever other details transformed harmless images into traps. Several worked in teams around canvases many times larger than themselves, suspended from threads like painters hanging from scaffolding. Others scampered through puddles of pigment, leaving carefully planned footprints behind them as part of the designs.

There was something almost festive about it if I ignored why they were working so desperately.

“Likewise. I just wish—”

“Under different circumstances. I know.” Without looking away from me, Alexandra lifted two fingers.

Across the landscape, a cluster of spiders immediately reacted. Silken threads snapped taut around the corners of several completed paintings and, in perfect coordination, the tiny creatures began rolling them into scrolls. They moved around the paper like sailors reefing an enormous sail, some tugging on strands while others climbed over the curling surface to keep the paintings aligned. Fortunately, within our Domain, drying paint was less a matter of chemistry and more a suggestion Alexandra had imposed upon the world. Colors that should have remained wet for hours settled almost as soon as the final brushstroke was laid down, losing their shine in seconds while somehow preserving every texture the artists intended.

“We may have trouble teleporting,” she told me. “One of the archmages possesses strong Authority in that area.”

“I know you planned to send people into memories, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. First, we’ve never tested it. Second, even if they manage to get there, we may not be able to pull them back out. We could end up killing them more reliably than those creatures would.” I reached toward a nearby workgroup through my Authority and helped guide them.

The spiders reacted to my attention like musicians noticing another conductor had joined the orchestra. Several broke away from the image they were working on and dragged a ribbon of violet paint between them, their silk keeping the line perfectly straight. Another dipped the pointed tip of one leg into silver and danced across the page, leaving behind tiny sparks of detail wherever it stepped. A larger arachnid followed behind, smoothing the mistakes of the others with almost offended precision.

“What do you propose, my truth seeker?”

“Us. We are one. Even if we exist in multiple places, we’re still always one person, right?”

“Correct,” Alexandra replied, spreading her arms.

When I closed my eyes and allowed my Aura to replace ordinary sight, the Domain became something else entirely.

Alexandra stood at its center like the knot of some vast cosmic web. Hundreds of filaments of shadowlight extended from her in every direction, each one possessing its own hue, texture, and rhythm. Some resembled luminous strands of spider silk stretched so thin they were barely there. Others flowed like trails of watercolor suspended in clear water, colors bleeding into one another without ever truly mixing. Every thread led somewhere. To a spider. To a weapon. To a painted creature prowling somewhere beyond the meadow. To traps being created around us. To Personas fighting in places impossibly distant from here. And to me.

Commands traveled outward as brief pulses of color, while Authority returning from elsewhere flowed back like paint drawn into a brush in reverse. Even while speaking with me, she had no trouble overseeing every single one.

“That means the Universe should already recognize that we are on the island,” I continued. “And therefore our Authority Claim should carry greater weight. Especially because of our Soulmarks. By understanding the truth of something, we gain greater Authority over that thing.”

“Correct,” Ali-Ani said.

She stood several feet away, but looking at her through my Aura made her appear much larger than the body she currently inhabited. Her hands moved continuously. Every finger twitched, curled, extended, and turned as though she were performing an intricate piece on an invisible instrument. A flick of her index finger sent six spiders rushing toward fresh sheets of paper. A curling motion of her wrist pulled another team away from a completed trap. Both little fingers rose, and dozens of silk strands tightened at once, lifting drying canvases from the ground before arranging them neatly in the air.

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She looked like a puppeteer controlling an entire theater whose strings reached beyond sight. Except the puppets painted their own scenery.

“So we aren’t really teleporting at all,” I said. “I’m not forcing the world to move us in any way, or it to accommodate its own position to our wishes. We’re simply reminding it that we’re already there, and that it would be better if we were there completely.”

“Interpretation as an artist’s tool,” Alexandra summarized my discovery. “The same thing you did in the Paris Splinter. Good work.” Her praise was accompanied by something far more tangible. One of the vast threads connecting us brightened. Authority poured through it.

I felt the first touch as warmth deep within my soul, followed by a rush of strength spreading outward through the shadowlight composing my body. Through my Aura, it looked as though Alexandra had dipped an enormous invisible brush into herself and painted a fresh streak of rainbow light directly through me. Colors raced along the connection, filling the dimmer sections of my spiritual form until they shone again.

Ali-Ani redirected the flow with small movements of her fingers, portioning the Authority with the delicate precision of someone adding exactly the right amount of pigment to a mixture. My reserves began climbing.

“The same principle would allow us to send people here,” I said. “Into our Domain.”

As I spoke those words, the entire magical realm born from our soul trembled. The reaction began beneath our feet.

Ripples spread across the soil, the grass and the flowers. Farther away from us, the hill concealing the path toward our Soul Core began to descend and the Domain erased it from the composition.

Earth flowed sideways in long, smooth folds, grass sinking beneath it without being crushed. Rocks disappeared one after another as though an unseen painter were brushing over them with the landscape surrounding the hill. Within seconds, the rise had flattened completely and the entrance hidden beneath it vanished along with everything that might suggest it had ever existed.

The Domain had changed its own composition to protect its heart. Alexandra was preparing our soul to receive guests who, whether intentionally or not, might be capable of harming us if they ever reached somewhere they absolutely should not.

“Ali-Ani, can you manage all of this?” I asked on Alexandra’s behalf, turning toward our Anima in her new body.

For the first time, the invisible performance of her hands slowed. One finger trembled. A dozen spiders hesitated with it. Then she clenched both hands and every thread under her control snapped back into motion.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I intend to give it everything I have.”

“That will have to be enough,” Alexandra said. “Catansi informed Joan about what’s happening. We’ll see how the Shattered respond, but we can’t wait any longer.”

She reached toward empty space. The belt holding our Spellbook appeared around her waist first, manifesting from a swirl of rainbow shadowlight that briefly resembled dozens of painted pages fluttering around her before collapsing into solid form.

The Waterflow Robe followed. It spilled over her shoulders rather than merely appearing, flowing downward like a sheet of translucent watercolor poured from somewhere above. Blues, silvers, and pale greens chased one another across the fabric in lazy currents until Alexandra imposed the Identity of the Lake’s Surface upon it.

The robe changed immediately. Its folds stopped behaving entirely like cloth. Reflections moved across them at various angles. Tiny ripples passed over her sleeves whenever she breathed, and the false image of a night sky shimmered over the fabric whenever she moved, as though she had wrapped herself in a piece of our lake and convinced it that it could reflect the cosmos.

Then she reached into our memories.

The Usagi mask emerged gradually from a halo of fragmented images: Penrose’s gallery, white porcelain, black eyes, the memory of fingers first tracing its edges. Those impressions condensed until the rabbit mask rested physically between Alexandra’s hands.

She placed it over her face. For only an instant I saw the porcelain. Then the Identity already sustained by our Authority flowed over it like wet paint, swallowing its shape beneath the face we wanted the world to see.

“It’s time,” I told her.

Around us, another absurd little project was reaching completion. The spiders had gathered around the rolled paintings containing our traps.

Teams clung to every scroll, covering the outer surfaces in rapidly painted scales. Some mixed greens and browns directly on the paper, while others added glistening eyes, narrow jaws, and tiny forked tongues. One spider ran the entire length of a scroll, trailing a brush behind itself and leaving a winding black line that became the division between overlapping scales.

By the time they were finished, the rolled paintings no longer resembled rolls of paper at all. They looked like a nest of sleeping snakes.

Dozens lay coiled across from us, each one concealing a different trap within its painted body. Their false scales gleamed whenever shadowlight passed nearby, and several of the tiny artists sat proudly atop their creations as though waiting for applause.

“So much for staying hidden in the shadows,” Alexandra said. “It’s time the world started thinking we’re an archmage.”

“Can we really pretend we have that much power?”

“If not us”—she shrugged and turned toward me—“then who?”

I closed my ordinary eyes again.

Through my Aura, Alexandra ceased resembling anything human.

She stood at the center of the Domain as a many-colored star, but even that description failed to capture what I saw.

Her shadowlight radiated outward in overlapping strokes rather than simple light. Crimson bled into gold. Turquoise curled through violet. Threads of emerald crossed ribbons of molten orange, all of them constantly moving around one another without ever becoming muddy or confused. Hundreds of connections streamed away from her like rays painted by different artists, spreading throughout the Domain and far beyond it.

Every creation attached to those threads added something of its own.

The spiders made the light webbed. The Lake gave it reflections. The masks added faces that appeared and disappeared among the colors. Weapons contributed sharp lines and sudden flashes. The Personas burned within it like smaller stars belonging to the same constellation.

Alexandra looked like someone had taken every medium she had ever loved, every identity she had ever worn, every creation she had ever forced into existence, and used them all to paint a sun.

And somehow, impossibly, I knew I was looking at myself too.

“Then who?” she repeated.