“I’m Tock, and this is Maxwell.” The girl with the azure hair and clock-embedded top hat introduced herself and her bespectacled companion, and Roland’s group introduced themselves in turn.
“Excellent!” Tock said brightly, clapping her hands together. “Now, then — how do we get out of here?”
“We don’t know,” Erika said glumly.
“The only ones who have ever gotten themselves out of Aîrchal,” Muirrach said, “can’t explain how they got out. It seems luck is the prime factor.”
“Well… I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Tock said with a sigh. She looked back through the cloud of thick, black smoke. “Best chance is fixing her. But even once she’s back up and running, if we can’t solve the navigational quandary…”
“Fix who?” Tsubasa asked. “I mean, we saw a door, but… what’s beyond it?”
“Our ship!” Tock said, beaming. “She’s an absolute beauty, best in her class.”
“Only in her class,” Maxwell said. He’d finally found his voice, after being startled into silence by seeing Roland’s group. “And you’re right.” He adjusted his spectacles, a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. “She’ll be our best chance of getting out of here. But the whole point was to avoid the Fugue in the first place. Now that we’re in it…”
“Aîrchal, Maxwell,” Tock said. “It’s much more elegant.”
“Yes, right,” Maxwell said absently. “The point is… we don’t know how to navigate this place’s complexity.”
“Sorry, did you say ‘ship’?” Roland asked. “Through the door there’s a ship? But…” He looked around, and was about to mention how there was no water, and no shore, but then he stopped himself. “Hold on. A ship…” He looked at the twins.
They said they came to Wonderia from New Elysia in a “ship.” But they didn’t sail across seas, did they? They said everything outside of New Elysia was night sky. And now these two come here in a ship that exploded on arrival…
“Where did you come from?” Roland asked.
Tock blinked twice, then thrice, in quick succession. “Uh… well…” she said with a chuckle. “That’s… pretty complicated to explain.”
“Far away,” Maxwell said. He adjusted his bowtie, and notably wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. “We’ve been traveling for a very long time, to a great number of places. Where we’re from isn’t particularly relevant, in this case. I’m… sorry. We really can’t say more.”
“Oh, a ship!” Tsubasa said, looking at Roland, understanding in her eyes. “You don’t think…”
Roland nodded. “Could be,” he said. “They’re just theoretical —”
“It’s all just theoretical,” Tsubasa said. But excitement was building in her. “Just like Intersections are theoretical, but Erika and Enrique said they’ve gone through one, so they must be real.” She looked at Tock, and at Maxwell. Maxwell continued to look away, seeming a bit nervous, while Tock just looked confused by Roland and Tsubasa’s hints without real explanation.
Roland hesitated a moment on his next words. It was such an exciting concept, but if true… then these travelers really could have come from anywhere. “Far away” indeed. Farther away than anyone could possibly imagine…
“Did you traverse the Void?” Roland asked.
Tock did those same blinks — twice, then thrice, very quickly. Maxwell coughed, and then froze up like he had when they’d first met.
Finally, Tock sighed. “Well, I didn’t think our first encounters in a new world would be with people so clever,” she said. And then she smiled, her eyes glittering with light. “You could say that. Our ship is… well… yes. She’s a Void ship. The only one in existence, as far as we’re aware.”
“You’re telling them that much?” Maxwell asked, eyes wide.
“What could they do with the information?” Tock asked, shrugging. “Come on, you can tell they’re not bad guys, can’t you? And it’s practically guaranteed that we’ll need their help to get out of here. We couldn’t solve the quandary by ourselves before — we aren’t going to start now. And, well…” There was a faraway look in Tock’s eyes. “It’s like the Lady told us.”
“Ah,” Maxwell said, and he nodded, calming down. “Yes.”
“Care to fill us in?” Tsubasa asked.
“We’re on a mission,” Tock said. She looked back at the billowing smoke pouring from the door. It wasn’t about to stop anytime soon, so she sighed, and then started pacing around the group in a circle, hands in her pockets. “Basically, we’re traveling to places that no one else can go, doing what we can to help those in need. It’s… a very broad mission.”
Maxwell chuckled. “That’s an understatement,” he said. “Yes, we traverse the Void. We travel to worlds so separate from each other that they don’t even know any others exist — and even if they did, they couldn’t travel between them.”
“Well, if they were friends with the Weavers…” Tock said.
“They don’t allow anyone to traverse the Web,” Maxwell said. But then, just as Tock opened her mouth to speak, his eyes brightened with understanding. “Oh, right. Caleb and the others. That was… quite the extenuating circumstance, though.”
“And we had to go retrieve them and bring them back to their world,” Tock said. She chuckled. “I think they wondered, but they never quite realized that they ended up in a completely other world from their own.”
“Anyway,” Maxwell said, “no one can travel to these places far and wide like we can. But while we do have an itinerary — places we’re told to go, people we’re told to help — we were also told by the Lady, the woman who sent us on this mission… we should embrace wherever the whims of fate take us.” He smiled wistfully. “She knew we wouldn’t always end up exactly where we were supposed to go, with exactly the people we were told to aid. But wherever we go, wherever we are found… the mission remains.”
“So it can’t be a mistake that we ended up here with you!” Tock said. “It’s just like Dorian’s Shore, when we were trying to get the others back to their home.”
“I certainly hope it’s not just like that,” Maxwell said with a shiver.
“Still having nightmares about goldfish?” Tock asked. As silly as that sounded, she said it with a great deal of sympathy.
Maxwell sighed. “Anyway. The point is… we’re here, and so are all of you. All of us are lost. It’s like Tock said — we’ll have to get unlost together.”
“I like the sound of that,” Tsubasa said. “I’ve still got a million questions, but we should probably at least start focusing on the problem at hand. Your ship’s the way out, but you said there’s a navigational quandary that you can’t solve?”
“Right,” Tock said. “Piloting our ship anywhere — whether it’s through the Void or through regular, physical space — requires navigational calculations. Normally, we have to make adjustments as we go — the sensors can only pick up obstructions or any changes in predicted patterns and pathways from a certain distance, after all. It’s like piloting a submarine. You can’t really see what’s outside, so you have to trust your instruments and your math.”
“More maths?” Muirrach asked with distaste.
“Hold on, what’s a submarine?” Roland asked.
“Sounds like something that goes… sub… marine… Is it a ship that goes underwater?” Tsubasa asked after a moment of puzzling it out.
“Um… yes,” Tock said, looking somewhat sheepish. “Right. Gotta be careful about talking about things that don’t exist here. Um… okay. So! Basically, yes, math, that’s how we make our way. The problem with Aîrchal — what our charts call the Fugue — is that our calculations get scrambled whenever we get too close, let alone actually inside it. Like an equation that’s perfectly solvable, and then someone adds in an extra variable or two, or a few exponents, or swaps the functions, and suddenly it makes no sense.”
“A cosmic prankster,” Maxwell muttered. “That’s how it feels, at any rate. I know this place is, well… a place. Not a person. But…” He glanced at Tock, and they shared a silent conversation with their eyes.
“Right,” Tock said, nodding. “Where we’re from — and we’ve seen evidence that this could be true for some of the other worlds we’ve visited — Locations, or, well, places, geographical spaces… they aren’t just rock and stone, grass and trees. They aren’t inanimate. They have consciousnesses. Not exactly like you or me, not exactly like people because, well, they aren’t people. But they’re alive, more deeply than we realize. A place like this…” she spread her hands wide, gesturing at the mysterious, mist-shrouded landscape, “a space where people get lost, where they can’t find their way out again, that disrupts navigation through it… it likely has some desire or will of its own. Maybe a ‘cosmic prankster.’ Or maybe it’s something more sinister. Or less sinister. But anyway, the point is, while this could all just be natural phenomena, explainable by weather or geology or whatever… our experience suggests that it’s almost definitely something more. Something alive.”
“Aîrchal is intentionally trapping people here?” Erika asked.
“Maybe,” Enrique said thoughtfully. “But Aîrchal is formed by the miasma, isn’t it? It’s a byproduct of the Fractures.”
“The miasma is,” Roland said. “But I don’t think Aîrchal was formed by the miasma. The miasma is just another element that often draws people into Aîrchal. But people have gotten lost in Aîrchal without being anywhere near Fractures or their miasma.”
“Oh, that’s an interesting point,” Tock said, tapping her chin with a finger. “Your world was Fractured. That’s part of why we try to avoid it in general — nothing really fits the way it should. She,” she nodded towards the smoke, which was starting to thin out a little bit, “doesn’t like places like this. The Fugue makes it worse, but… hmm.” She looked across at Maxwell. “Do you think it’s a byproduct of the Fracturing? Or its own entity?”
“Too hard to say,” Maxwell said, shaking his head. “The idea of a world being Fractured is… so much more than we ever dreamed. People, certainly.”
“And that worked out okay for Caleb,” Tock said brightly. “Perfectly manageable. But… yeah, a whole world being Fractured is… it’s huge. And while it’s got some similarities to people being Fractured, it has some pretty notable differences.”
Maxwell nodded. “Once we can get back inside and start repairs, we could check the library.”
“You’re not from here,” Tsubasa said. “I mean, obviously, you said that, I’m just thinking out loud. It’s just strange that you know so much about our… world…” She said that last slowly, hesitantly. Roland understood. Certainly he’d read extensive essays and heard talks about the theoretical Void beyond the Sky-Sphere, and the worlds that could lie beyond it… But the idea that one world was only part of a much, much vaster “universe” was…
It was so big, so grand. Too much to wrap his head around. And yet here were travelers from beyond the stars, from worlds across the Void. The truth was right in front of him. Staggering, and yet…
Exciting.
“That’s what books are for!” Tock said. She nodded back towards the thinning smoke. “She’s got an expansive library, full of excellent reads. Nothing better than reading to keep you company on a long voyage, after all. And when we were traveling near the Fugue, I started reading about that, and that got me reading about your world. Though, to be honest, there isn’t a lot of writing about your world from the outside looking in. The Fugue — Aîrchal — may only occasionally ensnare the random unlucky traveler from a boots-on-the-ground perspective, but its influence, and the Fractures’ miasma, kind of…” She spread her hands out wide, fingers curved, like she was creating a gigantic imaginary sphere. “Like that. A huge cloud, surrounding your world. So we know about the physical state of your world, we’ve read plenty about it from an astronomical standpoint, but who the people are, where you’re from — I mean cities or neighborhoods, not the world, obviously — the kind of lives you all live… yeah, we don’t know much of anything. So, uh… since we’ve got time… I mean, I know it's kind of rude to ask to know about you when we wouldn’t say much about ourselves, but…”
“It’s okay,” Erika said with a smile. “We can tell you about ourselves, and then you two can tell us about some of your adventures. That would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
Tock brightened up. “Sounds great!”
So they all sat in the grass, and Tock and Maxwell listened intently as Roland, the twins, Tsubasa, and Muirrach told their story. While most of the story was about their adventure together, they also did inject bits and pieces of their own lives — where they were from, things about Roland’s work at the Tower, or Tsubasa’s big family of detectives and lawyers. They also told a bit about the three realms, and their search for Elysia.
“A wish-granting realm…” Tock said, gazing skyward. “It sounds so romantic. Like, in a romantic adventure kind of way, not, like, lovey-dovey romance. And it’s the Summoner’s Path of the Eight that will show the way to the lost land. Not to be confused with the Land of the Lost, of course.”
“She seems to be clearing up,” Maxwell said, looking back at the smoke billowing from the door — the door which was, finally, visible again. If only just. Maxwell started to stand. “Maybe I should —”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Tock said, fixing him with a look of firm reproach. “We’re having a perfectly nice conversation, Maxwell. You should be a part of it! She isn’t ready for us, yet, and you know it.”
Maxwell sighed. But he didn’t try to leave.
“Does ‘she’ have a name?” Enrique asked, looking over at the door.
“She’s not telling,” Tock said with a pout. “One day, perhaps. You’d think after all we’d been through together, she’d trust us enough to tell us her name.”
“Speaking of all you’ve been through…” Erika started. “Can you tell us about some of your adventures?”
“Can you tell us about other worlds?” Enrique asked, eager and attentive.
“Can you tell us more about your ship?” Tsubasa asked, a beat ahead of Roland asking the same question.
“We can tell you some stuff,” Tock said with a shrug. “All of our adventures would be too much. But I guess we could start with how we ended up here.”
“Though the start of that adventure goes back to…” Maxwell started, “well… the beginning, really. But essentially, there were three brave warriors who needed our help.”
“Hayden, Camellia, and Botan,” Tock said, beaming. “And their dog! They sure put up with a great deal, and far too many detours. They were in our world, actually — the world we come from. But they weren’t born there. A curse had exiled them from their own world. When the time came for our mission to start, they were our first passengers. We promised we’d get them home — and we did! But, well… there were a lot of detours. And side trips.”
“And crash landings,” Maxwell said, sighing.
“Oh, this is kinda old hat for you guys, huh?” Tsubasa asked.
“I wouldn’t go that far!” Tock said. “But, uh, yeah. We’ve crashed. More than once. This is definitely the worst one, though.”
“What made it so difficult to get those three back home was the curse itself,” Maxwell said.
“Yes, you mentioned a ‘curse barrier’,” Muirrach said.
“Right,” Maxwell said, nodding. “We’d hoped the curse would have been lifted. Apparently — well, we don’t know all the details of the curse. They didn’t, either. They told us as much as they could. But the curse had locked them in our world.”
“Not our world specifically,” Tock said. “I mean, the curse didn’t pick our world. It was more of a ‘whatever world you end up stranded in, you’ll be trapped there until the curse is lifted.’ And they were trapped there a very long time. But they could feel that something had changed. And when we set out into the Void with them, they were able to come with us. The curse seemed to be lifted.”
“But a barrier from the curse still remained over their world,” Maxwell said. “We actually made a direct path from our world to theirs at first. But we couldn’t breach the curse barrier. Which led to our first crash landing.”
“Yup!” Tock said cheerily. “We learned a lot about her from having to repair her. And we met these lovely talking teddy bears — do you have teddy bears here?”
“I have a whole mountain of them at home!” Tsubasa said, beaming. “They’re so cuddly.”
“Oh, good,” Tock said. “Yeah, so, we met these talking teddy bears, and helped them out of a financial crisis — it was a whole thing. Anyway, once we got back out into the Void again, we received a distress call, which should have been impossible, but there was this other world, a really tiny world, where the trees were extra-sentient and had learned to utilize photosynthesis to send messages into the Void. Or something. It was all kind of…” she rubbed the back of her neck, her brow creasing, “weird. I never did quite understand how all that worked.”
“Me neither,” Maxwell said.
“Extra-sentient trees?” Enrique asked, leaning forward excitedly. “Could they speak to you? What was their civilization like?”
“Honestly, it’s hard to say,” Tock said. “They could speak to us — sort of. They were telepathic… -ish. They didn’t use any language we knew, but communicated more through emotions?” She looked at Maxwell.
“I think that’s an apt description,” Maxwell said, nodding. “As for civilization, it really was a very tiny world. And we didn’t stay there as long as we might have under other circumstances. Their issues… well, supposedly we resolved them. Though I’m still not sure what help they needed, if I’m being honest.”
“But we’re losing you, aren’t we?” Tock asked. “Sorry. Glossing over details, and so many of these adventures are very much ‘you had to be there’ kind of situations. And that’s just for the adventures we can understand and describe. It’s all been kind of a whirl at times. The point is, one thing led to another, and…” She looked across at Maxwell.
“We figured out how to breach the curse barrier,” Maxwell said. “We got them home, at last.”
“That was such a wonderful moment, too,” Tock said, beaming. “Hayden, Camellia, and Botan had made a promise to a dear friend. But their situation made it difficult to keep that promise. They’ve just been through… so many awful things. And then the curse exiled them. Coming back home… well, their journey isn’t over. Honestly, their world kind of sucks, there’s so many terrible people out to do terrible things to them. But they finally have a real chance of making things right. Promises to dear friends…” She paused, looking out into the mists, a pensive expression on her face.
“Even after we got them home, though,” Maxwell continued, “the curse barrier persisted. We couldn’t stay to help them — we had to make a speedy escape. We were able to get through it once more to continue our adventures… but our calculations were off. Or something had shifted. I’m not sure. But we came out too close to the Fugue, and despite our best efforts… we fell into its grip. And crashed here.”
“It’s… strange,” Tock said. “After everything we went through with everyone else against Sal and the Endless Night, you’d think anything that followed would be so much easier. We haven’t faced anything nearly as dangerous as all that — thank goodness — but the challenges never really stop. Every journey is a new problem to solve.”
“But we’ve made it somehow, every time,” Maxwell said, a gentle smile on his face. “I never would have managed it alone.”
“Me neither!” Tock said, her cheer returning. “We’re an excellent team, Maxwell. So, anyway.” She gave a bit of a sheepish smile to Roland and the others. “I know our story is… a lot weirder and more complicated than your own. And we glossed over a bunch of details. But it’s really good to meet all of you, to know about you, and to share something about ourselves. And since she’s still smoking up a storm over there, um… well. What do we do now?”
“I had a thought,” Roland said.
“You’ve had it for a while,” Tsubasa said, eyeing him expectantly. “Kept awfully quiet through most of that.”
“Yes, well,” Roland said, chuckling. Of course Tsubasa had noticed. “You talked about places having consciousnesses. Of them being more alive than we think. And that’s fascinating, and I believe it’s true. But something bothers me about this place.” He took in a deep breath. “Do you smell it? The way it’s familiar, and alive, but…”
“Not,” Tsubasa said softly, taking in a deep breath.
“It smells false,” Muirrach said. “Like it’s imitating those familiar scents, rather than them being genuine.”
“It smells like… home,” Erika said softly. Everyone stared at her and Enrique. “It’s not unpleasant, at least not to me. This is like the farms, gardens, and parks on New Elysia.”
“And those were built, indoors,” Enrique said thoughtfully. “They weren’t… well, they were natural, in the sense that the grass, the trees, all of it was real and naturally grown. But the spaces they inhabited, the methods used to make it all possible… they gave a different scent to it all. I’d gotten so used to the smells of Wonderia and Albia, I’d almost forgotten.”
“Is Aîrchal… manufactured?” Tsubasa asked.
“I have an idea of how to check,” Roland said. He knelt, pressing his hands against the springy grass and soft, loamy soil beneath. Closing his eyes, he hummed Kirin’s song — a song of gentle life, of nurturing growth, of connection with the earth and all that springs forth from it.
Kirin sang back to him in his heart, and together, Summoner and Fantasian stretched out their senses, reaching through the ground of Aîrchal, conversing with it, seeking out the answers to its secrets.
Calling on Kirin’s powers had always had a comforting ease for Roland. There was something very instinctive and intuitive about touching the earth, creating this tactile connection with the vast network of life beneath his feet. And there was a song in the earth, too. He was most familiar with the many resonances of Wonderian regions, but here…
Here was a song unlike any he’d ever heard. A feeling like nothing he’d ever felt. There was something alien, unrecognizable, to this landscape. And deep in the earth, in the roots of Aîrchal…
It was easy to get lost.
Roots branched off one way, then vanished, restarting elsewhere, unconnected from where they’d started. The soil changed at every new touch, every new push deeper or further. The loamy soil wasn’t so deep before he found sand, then hard rock, but then below that a swampy morass, and still deeper it changed again, and again, until…
There’s… an emptiness below us. Something…
He felt the shudder in Kirin, heard the shift in the Fantasian’s song within him.
You’re frightened? It feels like…
Roland almost recoiled at that immediate touch of unfathomable darkness. But curiosity was stronger than fear — and something about these empty, dark depths felt familiar.
It’s all right, Kirin. We’ll be careful. But we’re approaching something important, here — and we need to know as much as we can, if we’re ever going to get out of here.
It only took a few moments more of probing those depths with song that Roland, startled, pulled back. Up, up, up and out, he returned back to his body on the surface above, bringing Kirin’s song to an end.
“That was beautiful,” Tock said, staring at him. “And magical. But, um… what’d you do?”
“I asked Kirin to help me look within the depths of the earth,” Roland said. He took a deep breath — his heart was hammering in his chest, and it took a moment to calm himself. “Aîrchal… it’s… bewildering. But deep beneath our feet is a Fracture.”
“A Fracture?” Tsubasa asked, instinctively putting a hand over her nose and mouth.
“There’s no miasma, though,” Roland said, and Tsubasa lowered her hand. “This is… it’s all so strange.” He stood slowly. His legs felt numb, and he was a bit light-headed. But being on his feet helped him get his bearings back. “I’ve… Kirin and I, we’ve investigated a Fracture like this before. But the ones you’ll find across Wonderia, or the scant few in Albia, they aren’t like this.” He looked across at Muirrach. “What do you know about Aîrchal’s history?”
“Not enough,” Muirrach said. “Tales of Aîrchal predate the Fracturing of the world. But actual fact is hard to separate from potential fiction. No one has ever properly explored or examined Aîrchal. It isn’t a place that people can get to by their own choosing. And those who end up here rarely ever escape.”
“But we will,” Enrique said, taking his sister’s hand. All this dour talk had put a flicker of fear in Erika’s eyes.
“Of course we will!” Tock said. “But, um, well… while I’ve read about your world from a distance, and I somewhat understand the Fracture thing… I guess…” She looked at Maxwell helplessly.
“We don’t really understand it,” Maxwell said, offering an apologetic smile. “We know your three realms were broken, connections between them severed and made more complicated. But the lands you live in have these Fractures running through them? And some sort of miasma?”
“The miasma isn’t toxic,” Roland said, partially to assuage Tsubasa’s fears. “It’s a byproduct of the Fractures, but while we call it ‘miasma,’ it isn’t some poisonous cloud. It isn’t dangerous to inhale. Because, well… it’s dangerous just to be near it. There’s no defense against the Fractures’ miasma. If it is touching you, or around you, it’s already drawing you in. To the Fracture or, in rare cases, Aîrchal.”
“I know it’s not toxic,” Tsubasa said, pouting. “Just… anyway.” She shook her head. “The Fractures themselves, like Aîrchal, haven’t been properly explored. We know more about them than Aîrchal, sure, but not much. They’re these great fissures in the earth, but they’re more than just physical tears. They’re… metaphysical wounds, too. Spiritual wounds. They reach into, and out of, a world of chaos and discord. My grandpa told me stories about Arashi, the great Storm that once scoured the realms, before the Creator sang his opening song. He sang forth the walls that protected our realms from Arashi, and then sang into existence the Divine Dragons to defend the walls and safeguard and nurture the peoples of this world. Arashi is… a force of nature, a cosmic power beyond our full comprehension. Fractures are open wounds, tearing open the walls between our world and Arashi, allowing the Storm and all its discord to seep back into our world.”
“But there are cities built near them, right?” Tock said. “At least, that’s what I read.”
“There are a few,” Roland said, a sick sensation in his stomach. “They… are not pleasant places.”
“The lure of the Dark is a seductive thing,” Muirrach said. There was a bitter tone in his voice, and a distant look in his eyes. “The miasma births monsters, and pulls people into the depths. But it can also serve as a power source, for those reckless enough to harness it. Chaos, discord, is motion, it is a whirlwind, a storm of power and force. It can be drawn upon to power civilization, certainly. But those places where the miasma doesn’t draw people into the Fracture, it reaches up and sends the Dark into them. They believe they have mastered the Dark.” He shook his head. “They are chained to it.”
“Lawless, self-indulgent hubs of crime and violence,” Tsubasa said, eyes narrowing. “And… worse things.”
“We know a thing or two about Darkness,” Tock said. Roland looked at her. She was young and cheery, and talked excitedly about her adventures. But now he saw the weight of pain and fear upon her, memories of a perilous quest that still haunted her. “So… there’s a Fracture underneath us. But no miasma? What does that mean?”
“The miasma is a byproduct of the Fractures, you said,” Maxwell said. “So what’s different about this Fracture?”
“This Fracture, it’s… not entirely natural,” Roland said, shaking his head. He looked at the twins. “You said New Elysia was all indoors, manufactured, but you were able to grow farms and gardens?”
“Of amazing size!” Erika said, spreading her hands out wide. “It was completely self-sustaining. We never had any contact with the outside world — from how Mother and Father talk, no one in New Elysia did. We had to fend for ourselves. But there was no need to worry, no hunger, no needs unmet.”
“Hold on,” Enrique said, eyeing Roland. “Are you thinking… that there’s a constructed, manufactured Fracture beneath our feet? And that it’s… running Aîrchal?”
“I don’t know about running it,” Roland said. “But this place…” He peered about through the mists, and looked up towards an unknown sky. “I can’t make sense of it. Its boundaries, its structure… Aîrchal itself isn’t perfectly natural.” He looked at Tock and Maxwell. “Whatever navigational quandary left you stranded here, it won’t be solved through clever maths. We need to get to the source of it.” And at that, he looked down, at the ground beneath his feet.
“Hold on,” Tsubasa said, her voice wavering. “You want to go inside a Fracture? Nobody else who’s gotten out of here has had to do something so drastic, have they?”
“We don’t know,” Muirrach said. “The few who escaped from Aîrchal can’t tell of how they got out.”
“Drastic times,” Tock said, and Roland looked up to find her smiling. “Drastic measures. Maxwell and I have done crazier things. And it’s all paid off, so far.” She looked aside at Maxwell, and despite his timid first impression, he gave a little smile of agreement.
“It feels artificial, and manufactured, right?” Enrique asked. “And this smell… it does remind me of home. I think… well, I don’t know what to think. But I do know that I want to know how this fits together. Why this is similar to home…” He looked at Erika, who nodded, and then turned her attention to Roland.
“More importantly, we trust you, Roland,” she said. “And you, Tsubasa, Muirrach. He said it isn’t like other Fractures. Isn’t it worth exploring?”
“We have gotten through our fair share of crazy scrapes,” Tsubasa said. She sighed, and it turned into a chuckle. “Well, I can’t deny I’m curious, too. I want to know the truth behind this place. Whatever it is that’s beneath our feet, that’s forming the foundation of Aîrchal… we might be the first people to ever find out. Let’s go for it.”
“It sounds better than trying to solve the riddle of Aîrchal with maths,” Muirrach said. “More than that, I share everyone’s curiosity. You’ve stumbled upon a fascinating revelation. Let’s plumb these depths to see where they lead.”
“Right, then,” Roland said. “Let’s find a way into this Fracture.”