“Estelle, Estelle!”
A little girl hopped up and down in the corners of my vision, darting from side to side on the slippery floor.
I just smiled tiredly and continued mopping away at the dusty corridor, not paying her too much attention.
“What is it, Luna?”
She continued to hop up and down, her tiny head bobbing in and out of the bottom of my peripheral vision.
It was funny, just a few months ago, we were practically the same height. Now, I actually ate enough to grow to a reasonable height for a nine year old girl, and had to actually look down at her whenever I wanted to speak to her.
Was this what it was like to be an older sibling?
It felt nice.
“Nothing, Sister! I just wanted to say your name,” she giggled, dancing around me.
Her movements brought me chagrin, my grin tensing with worry and nervousness.
I chuckled weakly, pausing from my mopping.
I rested the large shaft against my body and patted her on the head, trying to calm her down.
“Please be a bit careful, Luna. The floor is wet and slippery. You might trip if you keep jumping around.”
Luna rolled her eyes and pouted, puffing her cheeks up lightly as she kicked the wet floor, creating a weak squeak.
Nonetheless, despite her disappointment, she listened obediently to my words, instead just shifting her weight between her right and left legs repeatedly, tipping and leaning from side to side.
Messy, almost wild, sandy blonde locks fell roughly around her face, framing her glimmering yellow eyes.
I had thought her messy hair and pale, almost grey skin were side effects of our life of poverty, but it seemed that those were just natural traits of hers, refusing to go away even after she was scrubbed clean and fed well.
Aside from that, she was almost unrecognisable from the quiet, dirty, little thing she was when I first dragged her away from that orphanage. Gone were the days of her nervous stuttering, downcast, teary eyes, withdrawn shoulders – when she skittishly refused to leave my side, yet was too scared, weak and frail to leave that shabby house.
No, now her head was held high – well, when she wasn’t stuck nose-deep in a book, anyways – her eyes wide open with shimmering curiosity, always ready to take in something new. She was bright, peppy and overwhelmingly energetic.
It was maybe a bit dark to say, but in a strange way, I sort of missed how she used to be. They were dire times, certainly, and I was barely more than a maddened beast, but it was at least a little bit cute how she would make up excuses as to why she couldn’t finish her food so she could give it to me, out of concern for the girl who ran away with her.
Now, she barely shared any food with me at all, too busy greedily devouring every delicacy placed in front of her at the dinner table.
It was a bit disappointing, really. I never got to live out the fantasy of telling my younger sibling that they shouldn’t be picky and should eat their vegetables, or the other, even more indulgent fantasy of eating the vegetables they didn’t like to clean up their plate.
She, sadly – well, not sadly, it was a good thing – was diligent when it came to eating her vegetables. I think we were probably conditioned into being grateful for even the tiniest scrap of fresh greens, having spent most of our days in the slums just feeding off of stale bread, jerky and sausages.
I continued mopping the floors, moving onto the windows not long after.
“Estelle!”
My sister continued to bother me as I tried to do my chores.
“Yes, Luna?”
I didn’t have the heart to properly shoo her away.
It wasn’t like she was annoying me or anything. I thought it was nice she wanted to spend time with me, I was just a bit worried she would trip and bruise her nose or something like that.
“Are you going to be free after lunch?”
“I don’t think so. Miss Symphonia said she’ll need me in her workshop when she comes back with a guest during lunch.”
“A guest?” Luna blinked.
I sighed, looking out through the window I was wiping down.
“Yes, you missed it while you were sleeping. Miss Symphonia left during breakfast for the city to receive a guest. She said she’ll be bringing them back for lunch, so be on your best behaviour, okay?”
I stared out the window looking at the city far beneath us.
Miss Symphonia had called it ‘Arden’. I wasn’t too sure about the specifics, but apparently the place we lived was in the isolated ‘Yrd’ll Mountains’, a treacherous mountain range that divided the kingdom of Sangferrus and the forest nation of Tenmai.
It seemed like a nice, lively place from up here. Nice wide, flat plains surrounded its circular walls, countless paved roads encircling it. Sometimes, if I was lucky, and I looked very, very closely, I would be able to see convoys of horses and carriages make their way in and out of the city, filled with goods and wares to sell.
There was one thing that was a bit strange with it, though. Something all along its outer perimeter appeared to either be being dug out or under construction. I wasn’t quite sure, it was a bit too far away to actually tell.
“So she’s not in her witch workshop!?” Her eyes shimmered as she chose to completely ignore my concerns, focusing on the other half of the sentence.
“No, she’s not in her workshop,” I grimaced slightly, a bad feeling rising in me as I anticipated her next words.
“Then, can we go in!? I want to explore it and learn magic!”
I sighed.
“No, Luna, you can’t just go in.”
“Why not?” she pouted, “you get to go in all the time.”
I reached out and flicked her forehead, like Miss Symphonia usually did with me.
It was strange how quickly that habit passed down to me. I guess not all of me was mentally an adult, and some part of being physically a child rubbed off on me.
“Ow,” Luna pouted even further as she cradled her forehead.
I just rolled my eyes in exasperation, retreating from the windowsill and moving on to the next.
“Because I’m a research subject and an assistant. I know how to handle everything there safely, and she needs to conduct tests on me. You would just see something shiny, touch it, and injure yourself.”
Luna frowned, giving me a small, cute glare of indignance, but otherwise did not speak back.
It didn’t take long for me to clean up the rest of the house. Most of the space in the building was dedicated to the workshop and the massive double-story library, and I could clean those in my own time when I was either on standby while Miss Symphonia was at her desk or while my sister was absorbed in her reading.
Noon came around shortly afterwards, signalling that it was time for lunch.
The timing was rather fortunate; just as I was dragging my sister along with me to the kitchen, I heard the front door open.
I blinked, stopping in the middle of the entry corridor with my sister’s hand in tow, craning my head to look at the opening door.
“Hm? Well, that’s surprising. The place is rather clean by your standards, Belle. Never thought I’d see you living properly again after all these years. What changed?”
A heavy, hoarse, familiar groan echoed around me.
“Eh, it’s complicated. I still kind of live like shit, for the most part.”
Two figures came into view.
One of them was a figure I knew very well.
Midnight black hair fell flatly across her back, draping across her otherwise uncovered shoulders, which were exposed to the air by the loose gold stitched-and-lined black robe she wore, barely hanging above her elbows.
“Yo, kid,” Miss Symphonia lazily waved at me, holding up two brown paper bags filled with groceries.
Her raised arm paradoxically made her outer robe fall, providing a rather scandalous and compromising look at the black dress she wore underneath, exposing her cleavage.
I felt tempted to cover my sister’s eyes somewhat. Miss Symphonia really made for a bad role model at times.
I really hoped my sister would not grow up with such a poor fashion sense in the future, thinking they had to dress so strangely to become a witch.
She turned towards her companion with her singular visible eye, the other one covered by a witch’s hat that dangled sloppily over the side of head, barely managing to hang onto her scalp through some sort of magic.
I think.
I don’t know, I didn’t really have any other explanation for how the hat hadn’t just fallen off, but it seemed really strange and wasteful to be using magic to just keep it attached.
Maybe clothing and friction just worked differently in this world?
“Uh, anyways, this is the kid I was talking about, and her sister. They’re my… wards, I guess you could call them for now.”
“Hm?”
The other lady with Miss Symphonia raised an eyebrow at us, stepping closer to appraise us with a singular, fascinated ruby eye, an eyepatch styled as a fake, spiralling black rose covering the other eye.
My sister lost all of her vigour upon encountering a stranger, immediately growing shy and stepping behind my back, nervously tightening her hand around mine.
“Oh, look at the two of you, aren’t you just adorable?”
She knelt down and patted us on our heads with hands covered by soft, black gloves.
Her eye trailed towards my sister, who stepped further behind my back, avoiding the woman’s touch.
The mysterious woman sighed in disappointment, returning to her full height and looking back towards Miss Symphonia.
“And the little one, I suppose she’s the one you were talking about?”
The witch just frowned strangely.
“No, the one I asked for your help with is the other girl.”
“Hm?” The mysterious woman frowned just as strangely back at her.
She swept her appraising, almost befuddled gaze across my sister again.
“Hm, I could have sworn…” she trailed off, “she looks about old enough. And that hair colour, and her eyes, are you sure…?”
Miss Symphonia just sighed deeply.
“It’s just a coincidence. Life has a strange sense of humour sometimes.”
She stepped forward through the doorway, lightly jabbing her companion with her elbow as she walked past us through the corridor.
“Estelle, Luna, please be nice to our guest. This is an old friend and colleague of mine, Selenia Nyxth. She’ll be staying over for lunch and then helping me a bit in my workshop.”
An amused glimmer ran through the strange woman’s lone ruby eye.
“Estelle? Luna? You really never were good at letting things go, were you? Are you sure they’re-”
“Shut up,” Miss Symphonia groaned, rolling her neck in frustration.
She lifted her arm in irritation and waved us over hurriedly.
“Estelle, hurry up. You’re in charge of lunch today, I have to entertain our guest in the meantime.”
The strange woman just laughed.
She extended out her gloved hand to me, offering a handshake.
“Well, Estelle, is it? It’s nice to make your acquaintance. I believe we’ll be getting to know each other more shortly.”
I looked at her, my eyes scanning her up and down.
Neatly trimmed silver hair, tinged with a hint of soft purple at the tips – the colour seeming almost like a mirage created by the daylight – fell until it stopped just beneath her shoulders.
She was tall and elegant, carrying herself gracefully, and wearing clothes neat enough to match. A clean, pure white Victorian-style blouse with a matching frilled ruffled collar and winding, draping sleeves tucked itself into a smooth black skirt that extended all the way down to her heels, clad in matching black heels.
I wasn’t sure if it was just because I was spending too much time around my sister or Miss Symphonia, but she did vaguely give me a sort of academic vibe.
Whatever the case was, she definitely seemed like a much healthier role model for my sister, compared to the workaholic, crass, barely self-functional Belle Symphonia.
“It’s nice to meet you, Miss Nyxth. I hope Miss Symphonia didn’t cause you too much trouble.”
“Please,” she giggled, “just call me Selenia.”
I nudged my sister to step out from behind me.
“Come on, Luna, say hello to the pretty lady.”
Luna scuttled nervously to my side, never letting go of my arm as she did so.
It seemed there still was some part of her old, nervous self that remained.
“H-hello,” she mumbled, not meeting the older woman’s gaze, “i-it’s nice to meet you, M-miss.”
I guided the two of them towards the kitchen, where I found that Miss Symphonia had already set up a tea kettle and teacups on the dining table.
Before I lit the stove, I turned to ask our guest a question.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Is there any preferences for meals you might have, Miss Selenia?”
“Hmm…” Selenia smiled mysteriously as she sat across from Miss Symphonia, pouring herself a cup of tea, “well, I have lived at sea for a bit too long recently. Preferably something light on salt and fishiness would be good.”
Something that would distance her from sea life… something like ratatouille would probably be good, right? Fresh vegetables were probably a rarity with the current state of technology and culture.
“By the way,” Miss Symphonia called out to me, downing an entire cup of scalding hot tea between her words, “while I have the two of you here, Estelle, Luna. You should know that this’ll probably be a common occurrence for a bit. Work and research and that shit is picking up a bit, there’ll be a lot of strangers over for couple of weeks. Citadel shitheads will have to come over to give me approval on a project I’ve proposed, might see a couple members of the royal court of Sangferrus if I’m unlucky. Just giving you two a heads up.”
Selenia frowned behind me as I started on my preparations for lunch.
“You know, one of those ‘Citadel shitheads’ is sitting across from you, dear.”
Myss Symphonia just scoffed.
“Yeah, sure. When was the last time you even stepped foot in that place?”
“Five months ago, actually! I had to give a very fascinating lecture on the Black Moon and the constellar oddities in the Infinite Dark. You should have been there for it, I’m sure it would have helped you with your Helios Engine… where were you for that, exactly?”
“Ugh, you’re insufferable.”
“How was travelling the world? Did you get to see the sights? Enjoy your boat rides? What do you think of Litanus?”
“Fuck off.”
“Oh, you’re lucky Hecatya didn’t hear you say that, she would have been all over you.”
“Didn’t she get with Aradia? Last I heard, those two lunatics were moving in together.”
“Oh, they broke up after three days of living together.”
“Ah, shit.”
“You’d better not let word get out you’re taking care of two children, especially one with features like that. She’ll have a meltdown if she ever hears.”
“Can I pay you off to not tell them?”
They continued to banter and reminisce as I made lunch for them, slicing squashes, potatoes, peppers, tomatoes and zucchinis into small chunks.
“Hm, I must say, you mountain and forest witches do have exquisite taste in tea. I rather missed this taste, living with a bunch of pirates all the time. Might I have the recipe?”
“Uh, not sure where you’ll get all this, but sure. Mesona, plumeria, chrysanthemum, golden honeysuckle, blue curls, licorice, bit of sugar.”
“...Never mind.”
“What, you expect a single tea leaf? For an elegant city lady type, you sure suck at flowers. Did the scurvy get to your brain?”
I threw the vegetables into a pan to brown, adding diced garlic and onions along with tomato paste for a savourier aroma.
“How’s Captain doing? Chang’e looked a bit off the rocker the last I saw her.”
“Oh, she’s fine… drinking a bit more recently. I think her kids have been getting into their rebellious phase, lately? Oh, right, she’ll probably kick your door down drunk and stumble in if she hears-”
“No, seriously. How much do I have to fucking pay you?”
“Oh, but think about it, it’ll be such a good time! She’ll love them!”
“I could do without hearing about her husband again.”
I interrupted their conversations, placing down lunch in front of them; a giant pot filled with pan-seared vegetables that were then braised to perfection.
Selenia’s eye lit up as she appraised the vibrant summery colours of the stew in front of her.
“Oh, how wonderful! Did you teach her?”
“Uh…” Miss Symphonia just shrugged, “not really? She just came like this.”
I plopped down a third bowl on the other end of the table, where my sister awkwardly sat by herself, reading a small novel or something to pass the time.
That action drew the attention of our caretaker, who raised her head and addressed Luna.
“Oh, yeah, Luna, sorry, do you mind eating by yourself in the library or something today? Sorry, squirt, I need to discuss business with our guest, and your sister will have to stay behind since it involves her as well.”
Luna just nodded shyly, putting the book away before huddling the bowl in her arms.
“U-um… will she be free after dinner?”
“Yeah, sure,” Miss Symphonia shrugged, chewing on a spoonful of food.
“I-I’ll see you then, Sister!” Luna nodded excitedly towards me, before rocketing off up the stairs, leaving the three of us alone.
Selenia sighed once she was out of earshot.
“Really now, getting straight to business. It’s always drab with you, isn’t it, Belle? At least give me time to enjoy this delicious meal.”
“No, not really,” Belle just shrugged again, “but we have some context and preliminary explanation to give the girl, and we might as well start while we’re eating before we end up wasting time in the lab.”
Her eyes flickered over to me.
“I introduced you before briefly, kid, but I’ll do it again. This is Selenia Nyxth, old friend of mine when I was more active as an S-Rank Adventurer. I think at this point you know I specialise in research regarding extraplanar anomalies, right?”
I nodded. It didn’t exactly take long to figure that one out.
“Right, well, as you can imagine, shit’s kind of tedious, involves a lot of dangerous situations and travel across the world. Meet a lot of strange people across the world, like this lady here.”
She briefly nodded towards her friend, who waved at me amusingly.
“Have you ever heard of the Infinite Dark, kid?”
I just stared at Miss Symphonia blankly, “No, not really.”
Selenia just arched an eyebrow, “Hm? That’s a rarity. Even the inlanders on this continent and the next one over know of it.”
I blinked, looking at her bowl, which was strangely growing more empty as time passed, despite not ever seeing her directly take a bite of her food.
She just smiled at me mysteriously.
“Dear, a lady can’t just be spotted in public chewing on food like a slob, they must be refined and elegant, unlike dear Belle over here.”
She bristled lightly after saying that.
I think Miss Symphonia kicked her shin underneath the table.
The witch continued on shortly after swallowing a mouthful of vegetables.
“She probably hasn’t heard of it because she’s not from this continent or the next one over. She’s from Litanus.”
Selenia blinked.
“Is she the thing that you’ve been chasing for a year?”
Miss Symphonia’s expression soured.
“No, but she’s just as annoyingly difficult to figure out.”
A slightly more dangerous, inquisitive light emerged from that ruby iris as the lady appraised me once more.
“Hmm…”
“Anyways,” Miss Symphonia sighed, “the Infinite Dark. Around nine years ago, a massive storm blocked off the sea between Tenmai and the Eastern Continent, creating a giant, dark stretch of sea that drains down into an unending whirlpool. Migration to and from has been completely fucked since. We knew for sure it wasn’t a natural storm, since once you breached the storm wall, given that you weren’t already ripped apart by the eternal storm, there were reports of something ‘strange’ in the sky.”
“The ‘Black Moon’,” Selenia nodded, “a strange thing, that one. Yes, when you sail into the Infinite Dark, you find that the world will be stuck in an endless night, and the stars above your head will be entirely unfamiliar. And above all, something always watches. A terrifying dark eye always haunting you, whispering to you, reaching out to you in your dreams and trying to pull you into the abyss below… that would be the Black Moon, the strange satellite entirely local to the Infinite Dark.”
“We didn’t know shit about it for years,” Miss Symphonia shrugged, “any attempt at exploration would go horrifically wrong. No ships ever made it back, and any straggling survivors who somehow made it back to shore all lost their sanity. Nothing we heard from them was good though, some kind of strange, hellish dimension appeared as you descended further down the whirlpool. There’d be voices trying to pull you overboard, ghost ships that threatened to capsize you, the shadows would start to come alive. That was the case for a while, at least, then these folks came around.”
She flourished her hand, waving vaguely towards Selenia.
“Bunch of motley explorers. Crazed S-Rank Adventurers with their own piles of massive issues-”
“That goes for you too, Belle.”
“-that for one reason or another, led them all to desire finally mapping and discovering everything the Infinite Dark had to offer.”
Miss Symphonia rolled her eyes.
“Ask any sailors nowadays, they’ll tell you stories and sing songs about the legendary ‘Black Moon Expedition’, who bravely ventured into the nightmarish abyss, and the only recorded crew to have ever returned alive. If you ask me though, they’re all just a bunch of fucking lunatics and perverts who got through because they were already unhinged.”
I blinked.
“Were you one of them, Miss Symphonia?”
She had referred to one of them as ‘Captain’, after all.
The witch just reeled in disgust.
“Ew, god no.”
She scrunched her face.
“Well, not at first, anyways. I didn’t give a shit until they returned from their first successful expedition. Then dear Selenia over here reported her findings to the Citadel, and it reached my ears. And whaddya know? An unknown lunar satellite? Constellations found nowhere on Manusyara? An infinite abyss? Madness that corrodes the human mind? You know what that sounds like? That’s a textbook extraplanar anomaly if I’ve ever fucking heard of one.”
She shrugged nonchalantly.
“So I did ride with them after that, but it's an on-and-off temporary thing. For the rest of the crew, it’s basically their entire life. For me, it’s just one anomaly to study out of a hundred. Was pretty useful though, remember that rock from a couple months ago, Azybantum?”
I nodded. It sounded familiar, she used it in one of her tests, right?
It was that weird, indescribable rock.
“It’s named after a ship, the Azybantus. Couple decades ago, it departed from the shore and just disappeared. The Expedition folks found its shipwreck inside the Infinite Dark, covered in the stuff. I came in after that and confirmed the signs of extradimensional rifts. Azybantum is a byproduct of the Black Moon’s call to Manusyara, it’s deposited whenever what circumstances that allow the Black Moon to briefly align with our plane of existence also drags along unfortunate bystanders.”
Miss Symphonia set down her empty bowl of ratatouille and stretched, getting up as she did so.
I looked down at my own. I was eating faster than I thought, it seemed, as I was almost finished as well.
“It’s the reason I called this lady over today. Wanted to get an expert on some of its more esoteric properties to help me figure out what happened to you when we did that test. Not the ideal person I would have called, would have much rather preferred to get Cynthia, the crew’s doctor, or even her sister Artemis, who’s the actual expert on the stuff, but Selenia’s not the worst. She has an actual rigorous education in witchcraft and has had close personal experience with the rock itself.”
We all got up from the dining table to follow Miss Symphonia to her workshop.
My eye, however, was drawn towards Selenia in that moment, who gingerly caressed her black rose eyepatch.
“Belle told us that the rock was inert when brought outside the Infinite Dark… strangely, for some reason, it did not cross my mind that would mean it was dangerous inside the abyss. I slept too close to a sample of Azybantum for too long, and the Black Moon’s madness reacted with it, almost drowning me. I was forced to cut out my eye to stop the visions from reaching the depths of my mind.”
The two adults chatted about small bits and pieces of their shared past as we made our way to the workshop.
There were the two brothers, Khonsu and Thoth, who apparently had a hard time courting women who turned out to be any normal level of sanity, much to their chagrin.
Their captain, Chang’e, apparently had a very bad problem of jealousy.
There was talk about whether Artemis, who was suffering from some kind of affliction that was unknown to me, was doing alright.
Something tickled at the back of my mind as the names filtered through my memory.
The names all felt eerily familiar.
Had I heard them somewhere before in my past life?
It was just on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite place it for some reason.
Whatever the case was, Miss Symphonia pushed open the door to the workshop and marched to her desk, handing her a book.
“Anyways, this is a copy of all the relevant data I have regarding the matter I told you about on the way here. You still remember that, right? The scurvy and Azybantum haven’t messed you up that much?”
“Yes, the girl, Estelle,” Selenia’s soft eye hardened into a gaze of cold scientific inquiry.
She glanced me over, flipping through the copied test results in her hands.
“You said she reacted strangely to the Azybantum during the activation of the hyperspace jump?”
“Yup, page 61. Temperature lowered. Not just core, also extremities. Added personal notes in case it might have been something mental as well. Eyes glazed over, no focus, mood cooled, unresponsive.”
“Signals?”
“One, unidentified. Couldn’t pinpoint what it was calling out to in her body though, or where it came from. Any of it look familiar to you?”
“That’s… concerning…”
“What is it?”
“Hold on for a second.”
Selenia looked at me intensely.
She bent down and stared at me eye to eye, pulling me close and widening my eyelids.
“Sorry, young miss, but have you ever felt your eyes become itchy while you’ve worked in the workshop?”
“?” I tilted my head, “Yes?”
How did she know that? What did the density of chalk in the room have to do with anything?
“Tch,” she frowned, clicking her tongue.
“What is it?” Miss Symphonia tapped her finger impatiently.
“I think I know why you couldn’t identify it. It’s not a signal. It wasn’t trying to communicate with her or resonate with a wavelength or anything like that, but somehow, despite that, it’s acting exactly like one.”
“And? What is it trying to do?”
“Do you remember how exactly it is that the Black Moon’s madness spreads and contaminates its victims?”
“The basics, but mental contamination is out of my ballpark. You should know as well as I do that I do everything in my power to avoid interacting with that in such a capacity that I would ever risk it. That’s your field of expertise.”
“Well no, I chart stars, that’s what I graduated for, but yes, you are correct, I have unfortunately become a leading expert on the various ways eldritch entities invade minds. This pattern is one that’s unfortunately extremely familiar. I don’t think you stuck around for it, since I only published it a few months ago, but I finally got around to publishing all of my results on the Black Moon’s hypnosis.”
“...You’re saying this thing acts in the same way?”
“It’s not in a form or medium I’m familiar with, not visual information, no hallucinations, no injected thoughts, no attempt at forced resonance, its frequency isn’t trying to force a reaction from her… but it’s travelling the same way. It’s trying to get through her eyeballs and into her brain.”
“Shit, it’s not the Black Moon crawling through hyperspace, is it? I did tests in the past and found that Azybantum shouldn’t have any actual connection to the Black Moon inherently, the rift just happens to spawn it and it happens to just resonate well with specifically the Black Moon’s calls. It shouldn’t be a medium to just call the Black Moon from other planes.”
“It shouldn’t be, but you said the girl was an extraplanar anomaly, no? Assuming your radar’s not faulty, it’s possible that it’s something within her that’s calling to the Black Moon, using the Azybantum to reach through hyperspace. Let me see her mana resonance.”
“Page 86.”
“No, I don’t think we need to worry about the Black Moon’s calls here. Her Water resonance is in dormancy. It’s not unnaturally inert, either. A high level of abnormality in one’s Water resonance is key in every interaction with the Black Moon’s corruption.”
“Then what the fuck are we dealing with?”
The next few hours were a blur of jargon, arguing, and shouting.
I was pulled around for all kinds of tests, run through all sorts of uncomfortable scans, had all parts of my body scraped and studied, and throughout the whole thing, I was lost.
No progress seemed to be made between the two of them at all.
The sun started to fall behind us, beyond the closed door of the workshop behind us.
I didn’t remember much of that day, but I did remember the argument that made dinner miserable that night, turning Miss Symphonia into an unresponsive, cranky mess.
“Belle.”
“No.”
“Belle.”
“No.”
“Belle.”
“...”
“You have to face the truth. We’ve gone through the process. There is no other logical conclusion from these tests. You can do the math over and over, you’ll always get the same result.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“The Azybantum is inert. It is doing absolutely nothing in any of these tests. There is not some hidden, secret data point that we’re missing. Whatever reaction we’re looking for has nothing to do with this half of the equation.”
“...”
“The ‘teleportation’ project underneath your house… the white hole projector, I believe you called it, I remember very well what force that runs on. There’s only one energy source in the world capable of creating an impossibility like that.”
“It doesn’t make any sense. You know It doesn’t act like that. That goes against everything I’ve ever learnt and discovered about It! If that was true, the damn thing wouldn’t even be able to function in the first place! Not without ripping my own fucking guts and mind apart!”
“It goes against what you hope It is.”
I remembered Miss Symphonia was gnashing her teeth in that moment, glaring daggers at her old friend, who merely looked towards me with a sombre, pitying look.
I remembered I was confused.
“Belle, you have to face it. The Void is an existence that is beyond us all. None of us individually could ever have hoped to comprehend it.”
“I tried and I did.”
“Then can you come up with any other conclusion for this data?”
“...”
“I’m sorry, Belle, I know this might ruin the only hope you have at building the Paradox Engine, but for the sake of the little girl in front of you, you can’t run away from it.”
“...”
Selenia sighed, staring at me with that lonely, sorrowful ruby eye.
“You might just be cursed, Belle. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone with as much ill fortune as yourself.”
I could not look away.
Not from the eye that was open, but the one that was closed.
There was something beyond that eyepatch, lurking in that blindness.
I felt it calling to me.
“I don’t know how you did it, but you found the impossible. You found something that the Thing from Beyond is hungering for. You found proof that the Void is alive.”
Playing up the descriptions and stuff a bit more since Estelle has time to breathe and we’re starting to get into the gacha stuff now, and it does need to be a bit believable that these are all gacha characters in a gacha world.
Wasn’t necessary for the Black Moon stuff since there was an organic opportunity for some of the exposition here, but in the future, if you all want, I can use the author’s notes to act as the in-game Seekers of Lost Sin glossary on whatever’s interesting.
Or I could save it to spread across random ‘wiki dives’ and other internet interludes I might do in the future. Let me know which you prefer.
For an example of what the former might look like, it would just be something like:
Azybantum
A mysterious black rock obtained while exploring the Infinite Dark, known to call out to whoever holds it when within the depths of the abyss, enticing them over the edge. The primary reward of the Infinite Dark game mode, used as material for Nightmare Shaping, crafting specific equipment, or as vendor currency to upgrade your Expedition Vessel.
Nightmare Shaping
Irreversibly corrupts and damages a piece of non-unique equipment. May be used to randomly invert affixes, multiply their effect, or to add dangerous, experimental effects to them. The severity, cost and risk depends on how you spend your Azybantum. Use at your own peril.
Expedition Vessel
The main method of traversal in the Infinite Dark. May be upgraded infinitely to help resist the deepening madness that grows endlessly as you descend down the abyss.
Also, daily updates might stop tomorrow. Chaos Zero Nightmare comes out and I'm a card game/deckbuilder degenerate, so I'm probably going to play it at launch. The next 3-4 uploads are relatively easy to write though, so I still might be able to bang them out within a day regardless. I don't know, we'll see.
How would you like in-game terms and objects to be explained when not given the chance to do so organically within the story?
