Chapter 270: So close (Patreon)

“So, here’s my theory,” Suri chimes. “While Emma made a valiant effort to solve this maze, we still ended up going in circles. I believe the reason for that, is that she set herself up to fail from the start.”

I stare at her, rendered speechless that she didn’t jump on the opportunity to gloat.

With a satisfied smile, Kaitlynn grabs my hand and gives it a squeeze. “What was the problem then?” she asks in my stead.

“Emma was working with incomplete information,” Suri chimes. “I believe there is more hidden in what we see on these walls. All kinds of subtle clues we’re subconsciously picking up on, that our conscious minds struggle to grasp all at once, translated into symbolism by Emma’s metaphor. Therefore, rather than just pointing out what direction our bodies are in, I believe we should try to properly collate our information.”

I look around at the patterns of symbols with renewed interest. I thought those were all just red herrings, conjured by my mind to simulate the complexity of the challenge or something... but Suri has a point, there’s no reason to assume it’s all just background noise!

After some discussion about the most efficient way to do this, we settle on each trying to interpret what we see on the walls ourselves, and displaying that through a symbol over each hallway.

It’s not a perfect transfer of information, so there might be some details lost in the process, but anything more than this would probably result in a sensory overload, and moreover, take too much time.

Soon, there are trios of translucent, glowing conjurations hanging in front of each hallway.

For me, it’s simply whatever symbol is most prevalent near a certain hallway, which ranges from a simple depiction of waves to abstract shit like a hole that I intuitively understand somehow represents nothingness.

Meanwhile, Kaitlynn displays humanoid figures that are trying to make something understood through their pose. Mainly stuff like ‘danger,’ ‘cold,’ and ‘spiky.’

Suri’s conjurations are the strangest, though somehow no more difficult to interpret. They show a kind of geometric patterns with lots of hexagons interspersed with fractals, that seem to give off vibes like ‘hollow,’ ‘storm,’ and somehow, ‘bees.’

Yeah... let’s not head in that direction.

Anyway, most of the hallways seem to have rather eclectic combinations of conjurations, but some have combinations that are starting to paint a picture.

“So, how do we know which way we’re supposed to head?” Kaitlynn asks after a while.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Suri admits, “but I have a theory I’d like to test with regards to that, if you’ll indulge me for a bit?”

Kaitlynn and I share a glance.

I shrug. “Sounds good to me. Lead the way.”

Suri takes us down a path that follows a set of matching themes that has a rather strong presence amongst our various conjurations.

Things like emptiness, cold, and hollow.

Lovely.

Well, it should be safe enough to head this way, as long as we don’t actually leave the interstitial space.

As we move from room to room, we quickly get better and faster at interpreting the patterns and conjuring symbols over the various hallways, and Suri likewise seems to be speeding up, sometimes picking a hallway before we’ve even finished all of our conjurations.

Questionable as our direction appears to be, her method for picking passageways seems to hold some merit to it at least, as she somehow barely leads us into dead ends.

We hurry after her as she goes up and down, left and right, the switches of perspective dizzying as we go through hallway after hallway, until she finally turns a corner ahead of us, and stops in her tracks.

With my heart beating in my throat, I round the corner as well, coming to a halt next to Suri, with Kaitlynn right behind me.

At the end of a short passageway leading straight ahead is another cubical room.

Except this one isn’t empty.

Floating right in the centre of that room, is an inky-black sphere.

Or at least, I think it’s a sphere. With how dark it is, it almost appears flat. Like someone—or something—decided to poke a hole in reality.

“Looks like this leads to a pretty dark place,” I mutter.

Next to me, Kaitlynn cocks her head sideways. “Well... I suppose that may be a good thing? I mean, at least there probably won’t be anyone around to spot us if that’s the case...”

I blink, then turn to her. “Ehm, Kait... I kinda doubt that’s the Yin-Yang Realm.”

She blinks. “Oh...”

“I concur,” Suri chimes. “From the empty feel of it, this portal leads to a location within a Realmvoid—most likely the Material Realmvoid, as that would be closer to our bodies.”

“But you suspected as much, right?” I state, narrowing my eyes at her. “Before you started leading us here, I mean.”

“Indeed,” Suri chimes. “This appears to be a solid piece of evidence in support of my theory... that there are in fact a lot more exits to this maze than just four.”

I frown. “Wait, really? But how is that possible? I mean, the whole concept behind this metaphor is that it should help us locate the place that’s like, in the dead centre of our bodies. Does that mean it’s not working?”

“Oh, no, I believe it’s doing a very good job of that, dear,” Suri chimes. “I think the problem is that there are actually multiple locations that could be considered the ‘closest point’ to the set of coordinates holding our bodies.”

I share a confused glance with Kaitlynn.

“Is this like a geometry thing?” she asks. “Trig was never my strong suit, but, like, wasn’t there something about a triangle having multiple centres?”

“Not really, no,” Suri replies. “There’s only one point in a triangle that can be considered closest to all the corners in terms of absolute distance. However, I think there may be locations outside of the Realm of Crystals that fit the criteria of being in some way ‘closest’ to each of our bodies, too.”

The penny drops for me. “Like where we got stuck spinning in place in the interstitial space!” I exclaim. “We were each pulling in a different direction, but not going anywhere!”

“Exactly!” Suri chimes without missing a beat.

“Oh man, if that’s really how it works, that’s kinda cool,” I continue. “If the symbols on these walls can be believed, there are a lot of weird places we could visit like this...”

“It would certainly be a most intriguing discovery,” Suri chimes. “Perhaps we’ll get to explore the implications one day.”

Only now do I notice Kaitlyn glancing back and forth between us fondly, with her arms crossed over her chest.

“What?” I ask, the word coming out more defensive than I had intended.

She shakes her head, her smile not slipping an inch. “Just realised that the two of you have more in common than I knew. For example, you’re both nerds.”

I scoff. “Are not.”

Great, now I sound like Loudmouth.

“Nerds aren’t really a concept in Peilor society,” Suri chimes haughtily. “Intelligence is a highly esteemed quality.”

“Yeah, what she said,” I add flippantly. “Your opinion has been noted, and ignored. Thank you for calling, goodbye.”

From the way Kait bites her bottom lip as if she’s holding back laughter, I have the feeling we’re not really helping to convince her. Drat.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, it’s an impressive theory, Suri.”

“Yeah!” Kaitlynn agrees, her eyes sparkling. “How’d you even come up with it?”

“Well, the maze metaphor certainly helped,” Suri chimes. “As I started to interpret the various clues on the walls in the rooms Emma led us through, I felt there were too many conflicting pieces of information. It couldn’t all point to only a few exits.”

“Well, this is certainly important information to have,” I state, my brows furrowing as I continue. “However, if there’s a lot of exits, that doesn’t exactly make it easier to find the one that leads to the Yin-Yang Realm.”

“True,” Suri admits. “The signal from the other gates muddies the Hydrum. But that’s actually the second reason I wanted to come here. You see, the themes from this gate were quite overwhelmingly present in the previous rooms, but in this room...”

Suri gestures at our surroundings, and I glance around.

“They’re gone!” Kaitlynn exclaims. “Oh, it’s because none of these hallways leads to this exit!”

“Precisely,” Suri chimes. “Now, I’d like to request the most detailed reports you both can make that can still be overseen.”

It takes us a couple of minutes to fulfil her request, but soon all three of us have conjured three to five images over every hallway leading out of this room.

With the additional detail—and without the nearby exit burying the signal in a bunch of noise—we see a lot more themes arise.

Much of it seems to still be leading to various places void of anything, but there are also some that appear to lead to what may very well be different Realms, either of the Spiritual or Physical variety.

Finally, however, a minor, particular set of qualities catches our attention.

Over one of the hallways, I have a symbol that stands for ‘toxic,’ Kaitlynn has a figure that’s miming, ‘heat,’ and Suri has a pattern that suggests ‘stillness.’

Any one or even two of these we might’ve overlooked, but put together...

There’s no doubt in my mind. Somewhere in that direction, there's an exit leading to the Yin-Yang Realm.

“Emma, how are we doing for Espir?” Suri chimes.

“I’m down to some 8000 motes,” I state after a quick look inside.

“Is that going to be enough?” Kaitlynn asks, wringing her hands.

I smile. “Trust me; it’s plenty. Let’s do this! Suri, please lead the way.”

“You got it, Emma,” Suri chimes, before she speeds off into the hallway like an arrow released from a bow, forcing us to hurry after her.

Despite the blistering pace set by Suri, we’ve been travelling through the maze for quite some time.

It helps that we no longer have to report on every single hallway, instead simply looking only for the specific few qualities that we’ve ferreted out we’re sensing from the exit in question. Still, the hallways start to blend into each other after a while, and my Espir Pool is steadily dropping. By the time I’m down to 7000 motes, I’m starting to get a little nervous.

However, just when I’m starting to wonder whether we have to turn back to the Realm of Imagination and try again after I recharge, we stumble into a particular room. One that contains an exit.

This time, rather than just a sphere of darkness, we’re met by a slowly rotating, familiar symbol.

A Yin-Yang sign.

I can’t help but frown a little at the convenience. Is this actually some kind of interaction between the portal and my metaphor, or just my subconscious applying wishful thinking?

Regardless, it’s clear that this exit is different from the last one, because it feels different.

It gives off a sense of duality, of Cold and Heat, Stillness and Motion standing in stark opposition, contrasted by a sense of One-ness.

In short, it feels... nostalgic.

“This exit should lead to a spot in the Yin-Yang Realm,” Suri chimes with conviction, her statement echoing my thoughts precisely. “So... are we doing this?”

She looks at me, as does Kaitlynn.

Hesitating for a moment, I take a peek inside my spiritform. Let’s see, I’ve got... 6739 motes left.

It’s suboptimal, but my pool should start to refill once I can drop the metaphor. After all, under regular circumstances, my Espir production is far greater than my consumption, and being inside the Yin-Yang Realm won’t change that.

So I steel myself, and lift my gaze to meet theirs. “I’m good to go. Let’s do this.”

Suri nods, and allows her human conjuration to fade away, as new handles grow out of her spiritform. “Then hold on tight, please.”

Kaitlynn and I each grab on with one hand and clasp each other with our free ones, as we move on to the next phase of our plan.

The disguise.

My original plan was simply to conjure a life-like Hoig or something around my spiritform, but when I demonstrated my technique, Suri quickly started poking holes in it.

The problem with Peilor is that they’re great at sensing energies. Which means that in order to fool one into thinking there’s a living being in front of them, you need to conjure not just a lifelike appearance, but also mimic the presence of Lavi flows and Qi.

Lacking the experience of sensing such things as a Peilor, Kaitlynn and I naturally proved unable to properly do so.

In the end, we decided to put our faith in Suri instead. Which is why she’s now concentrating hard on producing a very lifelike conjuration of a trigot for the three of us to hide inside.

My spiritform is something I can’t really compress much farther than its current size, which I fear is already bigger than my actual body, but thankfully, trigots can apparently get a lot bigger than the ones we’ve encountered.

In fact, fully mature trigots are apparently about the size of a humpback whale, with horns as long as a human body.y 

I’m very glad we never had to fight one of these.

For our disguise, Suri settles on one the approximate size of a rhino, so it’s a bit of a squeeze to get in, but still doable.

While picking such a large creature as a disguise feels counterintuitive at first, Suri assured us this is a very cheap and common Solith-tier host, mainly used for manual labour. Not only should it blend in perfectly, but the more dangerous, higher-tier Peilor will actively avoid associating with us.

No better guise than that of the social pariah, I guess.

The only thing that Kaitlynn and I will need to contribute, is a lack of Espir fluctuations. After all, there shouldn’t be three powerful spirits inside a single host.

Thankfully, staying hidden is something Kaitlynn and I are both quite good at. Me mostly due to my experience with laying in ambush, and Kaitlynn because she often had to hide while Suri was out hunting.

The final step to our preparations, is for each of us to reach out through the spots where our spiritforms connect in a way we’ve thoroughly practised.

As beings made purely out of Espir, it’s really child’s play to communicate directly like this, in a way that mimics the Yin-Yang Realm’s Telepathy.

The only reason we needed to practise was to make sure we could do it while giving off very mild fluctuations at worst. And for Suri to practise with sharing the ‘vision’ from her conjured trigot with us, so we won’t be blind inside of her conjuration.

As it has eyes on each side of its head, its field of view is a lot wider than a human’s. However, used as I am to interpreting large amounts of sensory input from my tuned-in senses—which unfortunately don’t work outside of Spiritual Realms—it takes but a moment to adapt to it. Soon enough, I hear Kaitlynn’s voice inside my mind.

<Everybody ready?>

Suri sends a feeling of affirmation, which I mimic.

<All right then,> Kaitlynn continues excitedly. <Operation Leapfrog is a go!>

Author's note:

From the feedback I received from my writer's group, this chapter needed a lot of love, so I ended up writing most of it from scratch this week, while in Spain! ^^

In fact, I'm posting this from the lovely city of Santiago de Compostella!

The reason we're here is kind of a long story, it's half vacation, half to help out my sister for a bit.

Finding time to write wasn't easy, but I managed to get 'er done. ;)

I hope you liked it!

Regardless, thanks for reading! ^^