Acryl

  He opened his eyes. The darkness before was out of this world, but familiar. Blemishless flowers prospered in the endless, eternal field. Acryl searched for Fosfor as he combed his hair with his hand, noticing that his braids were untied. His other hand searched for a rubber band. Feeling nothing in his pocket, Acryl moved his hair behind his ears.

  “Thyme!” Fosfor called out as she waved from afar. From a distance, she looked like a dandelion. Blown away in any second, but blooms the next time one sees her. Her white hoodie blended in with the flowers while the shadow sun cast down darkness. Before he took a step to walk in that direction, Fosfor stood before him. Her black eyes stared at Acryl, wordless. Acryl could only hear her whisper-like breath.

  “…Got it,” she said. Fosfor didn’t do anything; she stayed where she was, Acryl couldn’t see her cast nor sense the flux of Realm-art. One thing Acryl didn’t understand about Fosfor was why she could move great distances in the blink of an eye, without leaving any trace of casting.

  “Thyme, have you wondered how you got here?” Fosfor asked. Walking away, her hair moved by the beat of her steps.

  “Why do we only meet in dreams? Why am I the landlord for the Brotherhood?” she continued. Acryl followed her. White flowers bent as Acryl walked. He had those questions, too. Though he could explain it with the current model for Realm-arts, assuming that Fosfor is able to mask her casting.

  “Can I ask how?” Acryl said.

  “The answer is that every meeting, I drag your…soul, if you can call it that, over here, shove you into my projection, and we are good to go,” Fosfor answered, grinning. Before Acryl could process her answer, they arrived at the meeting table. The same graceful, long table with strange carvings of exotic plants and motifs on the sides, curving into delicate shapes, flowing along the lines.

  “Take a seat, we still have plenty of time.”

  Acryl sat where he usually sat. He leaned against the table as the cold crawled up his elbow. As he thought that sitting like that was impolite, he saw Fosfor resting her head on the table, arms cushioning her.

  “Seren told me what happened, believe it or not, you are now a pawn of the Starseeker,” Fosfor said. She straightened her back, raising her hands up for a stretch.

  “I can’t get you off the chessboard…But I have an idea,” she continued.

  Acryl swallowed. Seren warned him of the “fee” Starseeker may ask, Suiming told him of the danger of Existence answering prayers, but he never expected that an Existence, something that never looks at mortals, would choose him. As he felt his heartbeat accelerate, Fosfor snapped her fingers, and from the smooth, almost mirror-like table rose a chessboard.

  Fosfor’s side was the black pieces, and Acryl’s- white with the queen’s pawn colored blue.

  “I watered this conflict down to two sides, though there should be like…” Fosfor paused, counting her fingers. She raised five fingers, frowned, then lowered one.

  “Four Sides, the Starseeker, the Moon of Evolution, the Serpent Father, the Tree of Sunrise with us.”

  “Anyways, assuming that the other Existences are busy doing whatever they do,” Fosfor said, the chess pieces moved by themselves. Pawns being taken, cavalry joining the battle, controlling the middle of the board, heralds taking pieces by surprise, white’s pieces dwindled down to the king, two pawns, and the queen. On the other side, the black side lost the queen and both heralds, with only two pawns and one cavalry.

  “Here, how should black play?” Fosfor asked. Acryl thought for a moment, then moved the cavalry so it threatened the end of the chessboard, stopping the blue pawn from promoting. The white couldn’t take the cavalry with their queen, otherwise the black would promote their pawn.

  “Would this change anything?” Acryl asked.

  “If you are playing by the rules, it’d be best to shake their hand, offer a draw, but Existences don’t play by the rules,” Fosfor said, taking the blue pawn and promoting it to a queen. The moment it reached the end, the blue darkened to a deep black. The same black of the void above.

  “That’s my idea, instead of being Starseeker’s pawn, we are promoting you to turn the tides.”

  “How?” Acryl said. He swallowed. Acryl wasn’t ready for such things; in his vision, living as an artist and pursuing his passion was all he wanted after this journey.

  “…The methods of reversing the damage Starseeker has done involve another Existence, perhaps the Moon of Evolution could help, but I doubt they answer prayers, using those Senhashian rituals ain’t so safe either, the Serpent Father…well…never a good idea,” Fosfor paused, raising her finger before Acryl spoke.

  “If we manage to enter Treisaules, the Tree of Sunrise could slow down the process of whatever the Starseeker is doing. Maybe some doctors in Havel could help…But I doubt they’d pull the root of this out.”

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  “Then…when does the ‘promotion’ come?” Acryl asked.

  “The day will come, but you won’t turn the tide of this battle; instead, you are the key in the long run.”

  “But why me?” Acryl cried out. This wasn’t the journey he dreamed of; he craved the legends, but he didn’t ask to be a part of it. Acryl wished to uncover the mysteries, but he knew when to stop, and right now, it seemed that he had voyaged too far into the abyss.

  “…There is no other way, Acryl,” Fosfor said calmly. She pushed her away from the table, standing up and standing with her back against Acryl.

  “The universe didn’t let me and Nameless choose, and it won’t let you choose,” she said, waving her hand as if starting a gigantic machine’s gears.

  Then the scene shifted, the pale flowers and their shadows dragged infinitely long. Acryl’s eyes opened wide as he staggered to stand straight. Right as he was about to puke, the colors stabilized.

  A white stripe swam in the sky. Shining like the moon. It curved and continued onwards like an endless river, stretching in the sky, illuminating the blank void. All around him were gravestones. Graphite-like gray, sharp corners, surface almost reflecting Acryl. The gravestones went beyond the horizon, painting it a lifeless gray. The entire space was in black and white; not a single chromatic color met Acryl’s eyes. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, the graveyard was greater than the memorial site of the Great War, and more spacious than the public graveyard of Changan’s outskirts.

  “I built this graveyard after the collapse of Yel, yes, the nation that only rumor exists,” Fosfor announced, her hands in her pockets, walking towards Acryl. She did not smile, nor frown, her facial expression as calm and waveless as a statue. Fosfor’s statement answered a lot for Acryl. If she is a Yellian, then all mysteries about her would fade away, and digging further might only harm him more.

  “How long did it take?” Acryl asked quietly.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, Acryl, somewhere here lies the grave for the first Parsley, Sage, and Thyme, I’ve marked the graves of people I know, but this ain’t the time to visit them,” Fosfor answered.

  “Nobody asked me to build a graveyard for an entire civilization, and nobody asked me to become the Barricade of Death,” she continued.

  “I am not asking you to do stuff like that, nor am I invalidating your feelings, but I don’t want there to be a second graveyard like this, Acryl,” Fosfor said as she walked to Acryl. She put her hand against Acryl’s eyes. He didn’t feel any temperature as he closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Fosfor whispered before Acryl felt fatigue surrounding him. He felt he was falling, falling into something familiar and safe.

  …

  My child, the truth is calling you; the answer is near you. The sprosser sings at the journey’s end, but don’t cry before the sun climbs beyond the birches

  …

  Suiming

  He pushed his stars farther, manifesting more constellations to light up the space. Suiming held hard to his hilt as he tried to sense anything abnormal about the figure. The outline of it was sharp and concrete, a silhouette resembling a woman wearing formal attire with metal ornaments and some jewelry reflecting the Realm-art’s shine. Suiming’s stars illuminated the figure’s clothes. He immediately recognized the uniform- blue wool overclothes, gray linen shirt, the worn-out messenger’s mask, leather straps carrying equipment like Suiming did. There weren’t many female messengers he knew other than Seren, but if it were her, Suiming would know it.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  The figure approached Suiming as he noticed it having no scent of abnormality nor Existence, but something far more mundane and earthy. As if it were the wind-carried scent of rain, morning dew.

  “I am Dawn,” the figure said in Treisaulian. Suiming hesitated; he recognized that voice, that soothing and gentle voice, the voice that seemed to embrace anything in its arms. And the voice he hadn’t heard for two centuries.

  “The Tree of Sunrise? Why are you here?” he asked.

  “My child, there ought to be a reason for me to not be here,” the figure said as Suiming noticed flickers of light coming from beneath its clothes.

  “I wrote those phrases, I’ve heard His whisper…The Troupe, ak, the Troupe…I saw His stage, scripts played into eternity. But the stage has only horrors…my child…I do not wish for such an ending.”

  “Dew, dew is steaming away,” the figure cried out. Before Suiming could say anything, the light shone bright, illuminating the room as its limbs started to fade away. Leaves of light fell from its body as if many suns set beneath the reeds. The light shone brightly as a tear rolled down Suiming’s face.

  “Goodnight,” Suiming whispered in Treisaulian. As the last leaf fell, the room faded into darkness. Only Suiming’s light shone dimly. He picked up the leaf- an oak tree’s leaf. It was small, yet resilient.

  The leaf warmed his hand. As he turned the leaf in his hand, while it broke into sparks of light, the room shifted, and the darkness faded away as if books were flipped through. Then, as the page of the space closed, the great wave of the chaotic scents crushed him. His stars illuminated the space, as bright as a cloudy day. The rift was near. Suiming saw the ancient bricks, each one of which fit perfectly into the other like a jigsaw puzzle. A room that he presumed to be a dining hall from the remains of a long carpet, a table, and some residue of cooking smoke, leaving a ghastly shape on the walls.

  The place felt like somewhere seen, though he was sure that he had never been here. Following his feeling of the scent, he turned around. The scent was more noticeable than before, almost noticeable like the smell of fleeting fireworks on a calm night.

  Suiming walked toward the source of it. His heart thumped fast, then his pace followed, walking faster and faster to the other side. The dining table seemed to extend infinitely, beyond what his stars could shine; the remains of the carpet were nowhere to be seen.

  What if I looked back?

  Suiming swallowed. Following his intrusive thought, he turned back. His eyes opened wide, and he felt like his eyes were falling out of their sockets as he realized where he was.

  The perfectly fitted bricks and stones were gone; not even dust and ashes could be seen. The scene before his eyes was the scene he dreamed of and dreaded. This was the place beyond starlight, where the Silver Arm’s embrace no longer reached.

  He had reached the subject of Ferr and Silvia’s study-

  The Realm of Gaps.