[Hereafter] Special Release! "Cosmos in the Lostbelt: Remnant of the Shattered Firmament|Earth Bet"

Screw it. People have been asking for almost four years how I would do Cosmos in the Lostbelt for this story, so I’m giving you all what you asked for!

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“Here and now, officially, I, Olga Marie Animusphere, Director of the Chaldea Security Organization, declare that our Grand Order to restore proper history has been completed!”

No one was untouched by the announcement. Here it was, what we had all been fighting for the last year and a half, our victory. The final villain was defeated. The Singularities had been solved. Human history had been restored, and with it, all of the people in the outside world that we had all lost when the Incineration began that day in late July.

A cheer went up among the remaining staff, those who had been working tirelessly to keep the facility up and running. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged, smiles broke out across every face, and even the normally dour and serious Marie allowed herself this moment to be happy.

We had lost so much, sacrificed so much, and every tragedy and misfortune we’d bullishly trudged through had finally paid off. It was done.

Rika — in spite of her exhaustion — found new energy to jump and shout, proclaiming, “We did it! We did it!” as though she was trying to tell the whole world at once. Ritsuka and Mash watched her with carefree laughter, the burden of our journey finally lifted. Da Vinci observed from the side with a soft, gentle smile, and when she met my eyes, it widened just a little, as though to offer me her own congratulations.

Not even the Servants were immune. Bellamy and Nero cheered with Rika, pumping their arms and whooping with their triumph. A satisfied grin curled Aífe’s lips, and an arrogant smirk rested on Jeanne Alter’s. Mordred’s lips had peeled back to reveal a sharp, shark-toothed grin, and even the solemn El-Melloi II was letting himself get carried away, totally at ease.

“We did it,” Arash said from somewhere nearby. “The Grand Order. It’s over.”

I nodded, hand threading through Jackie’s hair. “Yeah. It’s over.”

There would be things to worry about in the future. Trials still left that we had to make our way through. The consequences of what had been done to see it through couldn’t simply be ignored or waved away, and the reckoning I’d known all along we would face loomed. Days, weeks, months — there was no telling when it would come, how long it would take the Association and the United Nations to regain their footing and start asking questions, but they would inevitably come, and we would have to be ready for them when they did.

But for now… This was it. We’d saved the world. Whatever else awaited us in the future, we could worry about it later. We deserved the chance to bask in our victory and enjoy the fruits of our labor. We had earned this.

I THINK THAT’S ENOUGH TO GET THE POINT ACROSS, DON’T YOU, KIRSCHTARIA?

A jolt shocked me, and my eyes snapped open before I could even realize they were closed. A sharp breath sucked in through my nostrils, and my head jerked back, pressing deeper into the cushions of what had to be some kind of couch that I had been laid across. Above me stretched a ceiling painted in boring creamy white, framed by dark wooden beams and accents.

I pushed myself up, cataloguing the feel of my body. No injuries. No pain. No stiffness, other than what someone might expect from a long night’s sleep. My glasses had even been left on my face, but when I looked around, I didn’t recognize the room. Some kind of office space, only there weren’t any cubicles or anything, just a few pieces of scattered furniture.

Where…?

Arash? I ventured. Nothing. The thread that connected us didn’t even exist when I reached for it.

A jolt of panic ripped through me. Jackie?

Still nothing. The line that should have connected us was missing entirely. It was as though it had never been there in the first place.

Aífe? Hippolyta? El-Melloi? I tried next, fighting down the terror that was rising in my belly. But there still wasn’t any response. The threads that should have connected me to them, too, were gone as well. The place inside me where they should have existed was empty, as empty as the yawning pit that opened up in my gut.

What’s going on? What happened to everyone?

I reached for my communicator, lips already forming around the name, “Marie —”

But that was gone, too. 

A thousand possibilities raced through my head, each one discarded as unlikely. Not impossible, because some of them explained the sudden jump from the end of the Incineration to…wherever I was now. Memory loss. There were ways of erasing memories that could easily explain the discrepancy, but we’d dealt with something like this before, too, when Ritsuka got cursed. It was entirely possible that I’d been hit in that final battle, too, one last “fuck you” to me from the big bad.

But this didn’t look anything like how Ritsuka had described the prison tower where he and Dantès had been forced to survive a gauntlet of seven Servants. In fact, this whole place looked modern.

Although why it was underground, that part, I had no idea.

“Good, you’re awake,” a familiar voice said.

My heart jumped in my chest, and I leapt to my feet and spun around, hand reaching for a knife that wasn’t there, and found —

“Kirschtaria?”

“Yes,” said the man in front of me. Instead of a Chaldea uniform, he was dressed in the finery of an aristocrat, a pristine white suit, complete with a cape and a blue cravat around his neck. He was even carrying a goddamn staff with some kind of astrolabe affixed atop one end. “Good. It seems your memories are intact, as well.”

But you’re supposed to be comatose, I didn’t say. Instead, “Memories?”

“Yes, memories,” he said again. “Your resurrection was the most delicate of the Crypters, owing to the nature of your…I believe you refer to it as your ‘passenger.’”

Crypters? What is that, some kind of edgy gang name?

And how did he know about my passenger?

A feeling of unease curdled inside my belly, sour and rotten, and a nameless dread slowly grew in my chest, a weight that tugged at my lungs as though threatening to smother me. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like any of this at all. Where was everyone? Marie, Da Vinci, the twins, Mash, all of the Servants? Why couldn’t I contact any of them?

Why was Kirschtaria, of all people, the one greeting me when I woke up…wherever this was?

“My resurrection?” I asked him instead. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

His brow knitted together and his mouth pulled into a tight line. “You don’t remember?”

“Am I supposed to?” I said, watching his expression carefully. “The last thing I remember is the celebration after resolving the Incineration.”

Understanding smoothed out his face. “Ah. Yes, that makes more sense.” He heaved out a sigh. “Although that does make this a little more difficult. This would go over a lot more smoothly if you had no memory of the simulation, because it would mean you had no expectations for the current circumstances.”

My spine went ramrod straight, and what felt like every muscle in my body tensed. “Simulation?”

He couldn’t be implying what I thought he was implying, could he? That wasn’t possible. The simulator could do a lot, could account for any number of scenarios and replicate just about any setting you could think of, but it couldn’t cram a whole year and a half into a shorter time frame. That was one of the hard rules we had been told about during orientation. It just couldn’t be done. 

Not without frying someone’s brain, at least. 

And this wasn’t Chaldea. In fact, with the bugs I had access to outside of wherever we were, it wasn’t even on the same continent.

“Yes,” said Kirschtaria. He briefly closed his eyes and let out a short sigh. “I suppose it would only make sense to start at the beginning. Very well. The impetus for our current circumstances can be found during the act of sabotage that served as prelude —”

“So that useless bitch is finally awake, huh?” a familiar voice drawled.

Startled, I leapt back and away from where I’d heard it, because —

“Caenis!”

— there, leaning against the wall as though she had been there the entire time, was the white-clad figure of Caenis as I remembered her from Okeanos. She favored me with a nasty grin, a thing of teeth and cruelty that gleamed pearly white as though to offer direct contrast to her blackened heart.

“Well, look at that,” said Caenis. “She recognizes me! What’s the matter, pretty little mage? Did you see me in that happy little dream of yours?”

“Aífe —”

But Aífe wasn’t here, and there was no Shadow Servant function attached to my mystic code because there was no module for it slotted into the communicator on my wrist and there was no communicator on my wrist to hold that module. A cold stab of fear knifed me in the gut: I was as alone as I had ever been, and I only had one person here to help me.

“Kirschtaria, this Servant —”

“Is my Servant,” Kirschtaria cut me off. I did a double take, staring at him incredulously. He didn’t explain, addressing Caenis first instead. “Caenis. We agreed that I would handle this issue on my own to avoid as much misunderstanding as possible.”

“Sure we did,” Caenis acknowledged. “But that was when I thought it would only take you a few minutes. You told me I shouldn’t go out and mess around with the people here because it would be sabotaging her chances, so I got bored of just waiting.”

What?

No, really, what? Caenis was Kirschtaria’s Servant? And she was obeying him? And she wasn’t supposed to wander around because it would mess something up for me? What the fuck was going on here?

“Sabotaging my chances of what?” I demanded.

Kirschtaria sighed again. “I had hoped… No, it was my intention to ease you into this a little more and give you the chance to process everything gradually. The others have already had the chance to get their bearings, so to speak, which already puts us all at an advantage over you. It seemed only fair to be thorough and methodical so that you could make up the gap as soon as possible.”

My patience began to wear thin. A faint buzzing hummed from outside the walls, but they were thick enough that the sound of my bugs was only just barely audible through the solid concrete that rested behind the creamy white facade.

“Kirschtaria,” I said with as much danger in my voice as I could manage, “sabotaging my chances of what?”

“I will get to that, I promise,” Kirschtaria said. “Even were I to answer you directly, it would make little sense without the context required first, and I mean to give you that context so that you can understand both your position and how you came to be here.”

“Then talk. Fast.”

Caenis pushed off the wall, eyes wide as her brow drew down. “Hey, bitch, watch who it is you’re talking to. If you think —”

Kirschtaria waved her off. “It’s fine, Caenis. She’s confused. Her response and her frustrations are understandable, under the circumstances. I take no offense.”

Caenis clicked her tongue and leaned back against the wall, but her eyes were on me and her expression remained thunderous. 

“As I was saying earlier,” Kirschtaria began, “the current situation begins with the sabotage of Chaldea perpetrated by Professor Lev Lainur. I assume you remember that event?”

What kind of question was that? As though I could forget it. “Of course.”

He nodded as though that was the answer he’d been expecting. “And do you remember what happened to you during that sabotage?”

My lips pursed, but I indulged him.

“I was knocked unconscious,” I answered. “When I woke up, I was pinned to the floor by rubble and the remains of my Klein Coffin.” I was sure that I was going to die there, trapped on the floor and choking on smoke. “The emergency Rayshift saved me and transported me and the Fujimaru twins into the Fuyuki Singularity, alongside Mash, who finally unlocked her powers as a Demi-Servant.”

Kirschtaria nodded again. “That sequence of events sounds correct. However.” He pinned me with a solemn stare. “It is also very much wrong.”

“Wrong how?” I demanded.

“It is true that Ritsuka and Rika Fujimaru were transported into the Fuyuki Singularity alongside the Demi-Servant, Mash Kyrielight,” said Kirschtaria. “It is also true that the soul of Director Olga Marie Animusphere was similarly Rayshifted at the same time, something made possible only because her body had been destroyed by the bombs Lev Lainur planted. Master Candidate Nine, Taylor Hebert, however, was one of the casualties of the sabotage. She, like the rest of the members of Team A and all of the other Master candidates, was put into cryogenic suspension until such time as it would be possible to resuscitate her and the others. She — you — was never Rayshifted into the Fuyuki Singularity and did not participate in the Grand Order to reverse the Human Incineration Incident.”

“You’re lying,” I accused him immediately.

That wasn’t possible. I remembered all of those battles, all of those fights, meeting all of those people and talking to them. I remembered Cúchulainn’s parting smile, Jeanne’s warm farewell, Nero’s last words to us as we were whisked away, Drake’s throaty alto as we all sang The Parting Glass. I remembered Renée throwing herself into Flamel’s arms, thanking him for everything. 

I remembered the small moments. The movie nights we all sat down to watch. The Christmas Party. Falling asleep with Jackie in my arms. The baths in Rome, and later in Da Vinci’s recreation. The talks, the comforting, the careful, delicate job of helping Marie piece herself back together after she got a body back. 

That couldn’t possibly be fake.

“You were not there to rescue her,” Kirschtaria went on, ignoring my accusation, “and so Lev Lainur succeeded in throwing Director Olga Marie Animusphere into Chaldeas, where her spirit was dissolved and integrated into its data. You were not there, and so Jack the Ripper was not contracted and the homunculus known as Renée Flamel did not return to Chaldea with the rest of the team. You were not there, and so Rika Fujimaru tragically died during the American Singularity.”

No, this all had to be wrong. It couldn’t be true.

“You were not there,” Kirschtaria said, “and so the others suffered for your absence.”

Could it?

“You’re lying,” I accused him again, but my voice was shaky and soft.

“The reason you remember a different sequence of events is because you were given the chance to see how they would have unfolded if you had been fortunate enough to escape the fate we other Master candidates suffered,” Kirschtaria explained. “You saw the Human Incineration Incident as it would have been if you had been a part of it.”

I wasn’t ready to believe it. Fuck, what proof was he offering? It explained the missing contracts, sure, but not how we got from cryopreservation in Chaldea to…wherever it was we happened to be right now. In fact, I was more willing to accept that this was the simulation or illusion or whatever, attempting to trick me or something while —

Fuck. This could be the Association, couldn’t it? This might not even be the real Kirschtaria, but an illusion of him meant to help whoever was on the other end extract whatever information they wanted from me. This was the interrogation, and none of what I was seeing was actually real.

“How?” I asked. My voice was steadier. “I don’t believe you, but let’s say I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt here. How? How was I shown this…simulation of the Incineration and how it could have gone if I was there? Who showed it to me and why?”

“The Foreign God.”

I regarded him incredulously. “What?”

“Daybit and the others already know this,” Kirschtaria began, prefacing his answer, “but while I was lying there in my Klein Coffin, insensate and unconscious, I was approached by a being referring to itself as the Foreign God, a being of immense power and reach. It made me an offer.”

Now I was almost certain that none of this was real.

“You made a Faustian bargain.”

Kirschtaria dipped his head into something resembling a nod. “You can call it that, if you would prefer. Regardless of the label, the Foreign God offered me this: in exchange for resurrecting me, I must act as its agent to enact the Human Order Revision Plan. I agreed, on the condition that the other members of Team A be resurrected as well. Naturally, as a member of Team A, you were included.” He smiled. “Of course, in the process of any negotiation, both parties are allowed to add further stipulations to make it fairer in accordance with the circumstances.”

“Feh!” Caenis spat. “Fairer, you say! Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

It was more morbid curiosity than anything else that made me ask, “And what further stipulations did this…Foreign God add to make up for bringing the rest of us back, too?”

Kirschtaria let a breath seethe out of his nostrils.

“That a simulation of the Human Order Incineration Incident had to be successfully completed for each member of Team A resurrected,” he admitted, and I felt my eyebrows rise towards my hairline. “You, Daybit, and I are the only ones to make it from start to finish.”

That was… Okay, I didn’t know how that was related to this interrogation, but I felt a little proud. None of this was real or true, but the idea that only two other members of Team A had what it took to do what I’d done made me feel a little vindicated. I hadn’t done everything perfectly, but I’d done my best, and apparently, my best was better than some of the Clock Tower’s best and brightest.

Entertaining this for a second, “So you, me, and Daybit are the only ones who got resurrected.”

Kirschtaria shook his head. “No, that’s not it at all. The deal was that all members of Team A would be resurrected, and in exchange, one simulation of the Incineration had to be completed successfully for each member. At no point was it ever stipulated that the one being resurrected had to be the one to complete the simulation successfully.”

It took a moment for the implication to fully sink in, and a moment more for me to feel the ripple of surprised disbelief that vibrated through me, but once it had, all that was left in its wake was exasperation. Whoever you are, are you even trying at this point? 

“You’re saying that you completed another five simulations of the Incineration, on your own, so that the others could get their resurrections, too.”

“Yes,” Kirschtaria — or whoever it was that was wearing his face — said, completely serious. “That was the deal I struck with the Foreign God. Failure wasn’t an option.”

“Right.” I heaved out a sigh, crossing my arms. “Whoever you are, you’ve done a decent enough job capturing Wodime’s mannerisms and personality, at least as well as I ever knew him. But if you were trying to come up with a convincing story for how he came back to life and we wound up…wherever this is, some kind of so-called god whispering to him while he was in suspended animation wasn’t it.”

Kirschtaria’s brow furrowed, but it was Caenis who broke out into loud, barking laughter, head tossed back and mouth open wide.

“She thinks this is some kind of illusion!” Caenis cackled.

For a second… But I didn’t let that reaction shake my conviction for longer than that.

“I’ve known from the beginning there was going to be an inquiry after it was all over,” I said, still talking to whoever was wearing Kirschtaria’s face. “The world can’t lose a year and a half without consequences, and since Chaldea was the only thing left standing during the apocalypse, the Association and the UN were going to come looking for answers, it was only a matter of when. So if you were going to try and find a way of rifling through my memories or whatever, this one was almost insultingly ridiculous.”

A blur of movement. By the time I registered it in the corner of my vision, a hand was already around my throat, squeezing, as my feet left the ground and my body lurched into the air. 

“Urk…”

I wheezed, trying to suck in a breath, but it was like trying to breathe through a straw. My hands scrabbled and groped for a grip on the fingers wrapped around my neck, but they were like iron bars, and even digging in my nails wasn’t enough to so much as dimple the bronze skin.

My brain finally caught up with everything, a precious few seconds too late to even attempt doing anything about it: Caenis. She held me up by my throat, her hand squeezing just enough to make me feel like I was suffocating, just enough to make the edges of my vision darken, but not enough to actually cut off my air or my blood flow.

“So?” She grinned up at me, eyes wide and crazed, a broad, vicious, sadistic grin pulling at her mouth. “Is this real enough for you, little mage?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. She had too firm a grip on me, and my bugs were too slow, trying to find a way into this bizarre place. It occurred to me that was exactly what they wanted, for me to reveal my passenger so they could get some sort of idea how it worked, but even if this wasn’t real, it definitely felt real enough.

“I think you’ve gotten your point across, Caenis,” Kirschtaria said with the air of a scolding.

“Heh!”

Caenis let go, and I dropped immediately, my legs crumpling underneath me as knees unprepared to support my weight buckled beneath it. Coughs ripped themselves out of my throat as I sucked down air to make up for the lack I’d had just a second ago, and that was almost as humiliating as how casually Caenis walked away, leaving me to recover from her violence.

Kirschtaria took a step closer, and my shoulders tightened — was this where the facade ended? Was this where the interrogation slipped from “friendly” to “hostile?”

How much of this was happening in my own head, and how much of it was just an illusion pasted over an interrogation room? I still wanted to believe that, but…

But this wasn’t Chaldea. This wasn’t anywhere I recognized. If this was the Association, they had dragged me off to some deep, dark hole, away from anyone who might have offered me support, and they’d cut me off from everything, including my Servants. I still had my Command Spells, but those were useless without a Servant to call upon.

“I understand that the situation is unbelievable,” Kirschtaria said with something like sympathy. “Even veteran magi with centuries-long pedigrees would struggle to accept the truth as it is. I can’t blame you for disbelieving me when I tell you that everything you experienced as part of the Human Order Incineration Incident amounts to little more than a particularly vivid dream. Despite this, there is a limit to the amount of slack I can give you before it starts being called favoritism, and that would do neither of us any good.”

I glared up at him from under my brow, rubbing at my sore neck. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out later that it had bruised. Caenis really was just as much of a brute as her legend depicted her.

“If you want to have any chance of surviving into the future, then you will inevitably have to accept that this is the truth,” Kirschtaria continued, and the warmth had disappeared from his voice. “The Human Order Incineration Incident has been resolved, and you had no part in it. This, now, is the Human Order Revision Plan, and you have no choice except to take part. Let me be clear.”

He swept his arm out to encompass the room around us. “This world we are in now is an alternate history, a failed future that was pruned by the Human Order as a result of its own stagnation. However, through the power of the Foreign God and the seeds it dropped onto the planet, Trees of Fantasy have grown and given these pruned worlds new life. Through these trees, these Lostbelts live again, given a second chance to flourish.”

Lostbelt? Pruned timelines? What the hell was this supposed to be? Why was all of this just getting more ridiculous?

“There are seven other Lostbelts,” Kirschtaria continued, speaking at me more than he was to me. “Each member of Team A has been given custody of one of them, and that now includes you, Taylor Hebert. We are the Crypters, charged with carrying out the Human Order Revision Plan, and tasked with supplanting the failed timeline known as Proper Human History with a more suitable one.”

My head jerked up. What?

He looked me right in the eye. “But only one Lostbelt can be successful. If you want to continue on and live, you must grow your Lostbelt, nurture it, and bring its Tree of Fantasy to full maturity so that yours is the Lostbelt that becomes the truth. The other Crypters, the other members of the former Team A, are not your friends and cannot even truly be considered your allies. They are your rivals, and from this point forward, you must treat them as such.”

“You’re insane,” I managed to rasp. “The goal of Chaldea was to protect mankind and the proper course of history, and now all of you are turning your backs on the very thing you swore to uphold until your dying breath?”

“The Chaldea of which we were a part failed,” Kirschtaria countered. “It could not prevent the Incineration, even as it solved it. Proper Human History was not robust enough to prevent its own destruction. That is the purpose of these Lostbelts. The one most suited to continue on will replace the failed timeline known as proper history and usher in a new golden age of humanity, and we Crypters are here to shepherd those Lostbelts into the future.”

“Kirschtaria Wodime,” a new voice rumbled, and a giant of a man in thick, golden plates of armor appeared suddenly, the curls of his long, white hair bouncing. A scowl pulled at his bearded face, even as sheer presence rolled off of him like waves of heat from the sun. “What violence have you and your Servant visited upon my Master?”

“Master?”

My eyes went down to my hand: my Command Spells. They couldn’t exist without — no. No way. In the first place, how? In the second, when?

“It was a misunderstanding, Emperor Charles,” Kirschtaria said, inclining his head in a short bow.

“Wanna make something about it?” Caenis challenged, body tensing.

The new Servant — Emperor Charles, and if that was who I thought it was, wow — turned an imperious glare towards Caenis, full of cold fury and murderous intent.

“There’s no need to go that far,” Kirschtaria insisted. He turned back to me. “Taylor. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising, considering you remember the simulation of the Incineration where the others didn’t, but another irregularity occurred. When the other Crypters summoned their Servants, a sympathetic reaction brough yours forth while you were still unconscious.”

“You can’t be…” I looked back over at Emperor Charles. “Him?”

“My apologies for my absence, Master,” Emperor Charles said gravely. “However, as your representative in this world, my attentions were needed elsewhere to ensure its stability.” He turned another glare towards Kirschtaria. “Kirschtaria Wodime assured me that I could entrust your safety to his care in the meantime, and that he would endeavor to explain the circumstances forthwith.”

My Command Spells burned, and impossibly, in the back of my mind, a new channel blazed into existence — not replacing any of the absent ones, but an entirely separate one all its own. In the most ass-backwards way I could have imagined it, my bond to Emperor Charles had just been established, our contract completed.

Servant, Ruler, Charles the Great. Charlemagne. He was now under my command.

“Where even are we?”

“This is Earth Bet,” Kirschtaria answered, “in the year 2018 AD.”

My head whipped back around towards him so fast I felt my neck crack. “What?”

“This is a timeline that was rejected,” said Kirschtaria. “A possibility that was denied. It has been restored to life by the Fantasy Tree Spiderweb.”

What? Really? You’ve got to be kidding me.

“It is your task as a Crypter to see it grow,” Kirschtaria continued, heedless of my disbelief. He turned aside and gestured to a hallway that led deeper into whatever facility we were in. “The King chosen as steward of this Lostbelt is imprisoned within this facility, left here and shackled by those who see them cast down. Guide them down the path that would see the Fantasy Tree blossom, for that is the only path towards the future that remains to you now, Taylor Hebert.”

He turned away with a dramatic flutter of his cloak, and Caenis went over to join him. With one of her hands wrapping around his waist, they stepped forward — and vanished.

What the hell. On top of everything else, why not?

Slowly, I stood. My throat was still tender, but it wasn’t going to stop me, and it wasn’t real anyway. Probably. Maybe. I was…less certain of that than I wanted to be, but only because, if this was the Association’s interrogation, it was the most backwards, nonsensical interrogation imaginable. None of it made any sense, none of it fit, I didn’t have any idea how this whole farce was supposed to make me spill anything.

“Are you well, Master?” asked Emperor Charles.

“Well enough,” I replied. A muttered ‘First Aid’ fixed the damage and soothed the ache. I glanced over at him. “So you’re my Servant.”

“I am,” he said.

My lips thinned. “No offense, but I’m still not entirely sure how real this all is.”

Emperor Charles hummed, eyes narrow. “Kirschtaria informed me that you would just now be waking from a coma. It is understandable that your grasp on reality might perhaps be somewhat…tenuous.”

That was a way to put it.

“Let’s go see what this ‘King of the Lostbelt’ looks like.”

Emperor Charles didn’t protest. He fell into step with me without a second of hesitation as we walked down the hallway, deeper into the facility — and it was deeper. I still couldn’t get any bugs in further on, but out the other end, in the opposite direction, I’d managed to find a door that connected to the outside. The only trouble was that it seemed as though there was another door between that door and the rest of the facility, and that one was hermetically sealed. I couldn’t find so much as a crack large enough to squeeze a flea through.

The hallway led further on, and then down, deeper into the Earth. Charles and I kept going, down first one flight of stairs, then another. Abandoned security checkpoints sat along the way, thick walls with huge, metal doors left wide open, as though someone had been in a rush to leave and forgotten to lock up behind them.

Further and further and further down we went, down what had to be something like three hundred feet below the surface. The deeper we went, the more obvious it was that some kind of violence had taken place here — gouges in the metal doors, deep rents in the floors and walls, crumbling sections of concrete that was so thick even a three-foot crater wasn’t enough to compromise its strength.

At last, we reached a final door, a set of double doors not unlike the massive one that guarded the Rayshift Chamber in Chaldea. These, at last, were not left fully ajar, but opened just a crack, revealing the blunted, interlocking teeth and thick, circular hydraulic bolts that served to keep them shut.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Emperor Charles took it upon himself to reach out and grasp either door in each hand and slowly pull them apart. The metal doors groaned, a low, tortured sound that echoed off of the walls, and the entire place seemed to rumble and shake with the threat of collapse, but slowly, the small gap grew larger and larger. When it was big enough to accommodate both myself and Emperor Charles, he stopped and let go.

He went through first, probably to make sure he could jump to my defense the instant I needed it, and I followed after him, stepping to the side and around Emperor Charles’ bulk. The entire room beyond was cast in a dim light, because the only source was a handful of flickering bulbs mounted up near the ceiling, which was something like a hundred feet up. In fact, the whole place was huge, absolutely enormous, and I couldn’t see the whole thing from where I was. It was like someone had taken two or three airplane hangers, the big kind for passenger jets, and stacked them on top of each other.

But slowly, my eyes adjusted, and within the gloom, objects started taking shape. A massive slab, positioned smack-dab in the middle of the room, and affixed to its front was… Was that…a person?

Cautiously, I went deeper into the room, my footsteps echoing across the floor. Emperor Charles stayed with me, keeping pace and staying alert.

The smell hit me first, the rank stench of rot and festering body odor, and it was so overpowering that it was almost like a physical force. Had they strung up a corpse down here? Was that some kind of sick joke by Kirschtaria or whoever was wearing his face?

I held my hand up to my face, wishing I had that mask Da Vinci had modified for me back in London, and braved getting closer. The closer I got, the more details started to form. A body, arms spread out like they’d been crucified. Legs down towards the floor, several feet off the ground. Thick, metal restraints fit for a high level brute covered the hands and feet entirely, and similarly thick bands held the hips, shoulders, and knees down to minimize any form of leverage.

Who the hell deserved this?

A woman. The arms and the shape of the torso — what I could see of it around the restraints — hinted as much, and there was the swell of a bust there, too. The remains of a nice, black suit hung in strips, barely preserving her modesty, but they did nothing to hide the splotches of mottled, gray flesh that afflicted her seemingly at random, a contrast to the pale skin that looked like her more natural complexion. On second glance, what I had originally mistaken for bits of a hood or scarf hanging from her neck and head were strands of wavy black hair, greasy and unkempt. Her head lolled limply, chin tucked against her chest.

Cautiously, I looked at one of the stretches of gray skin. Was it some kind of illness or necrotized flesh —

A face. A familiar face, set in determination, blue eyes blazing as he stood tall.

“Miss Taylor,” a familiar girl beside him said mournfully. “I’m sorry. But as long as you’re an enemy of proper history…I will stand against you!”

— and I gasped, jerking backwards.

Was that…?

“Master?” asked Emperor Charles.

I shook my head. “I’m…not sure what I just…”

A vision? Of the future? What kind of cape had that embedded in their body? Was it limited only to precognition or…?

I closed my eyes, focused entirely on what I wanted — “Who were you?” — and then looked at the next patch of gray skin —

A sky, so vast, so infinite, with so many stars. A bright moon above, breathtaking in its beauty and its cruel indifference. My eyes were wet.

“It’s okay. I got the answer, myself.”

The first bullet hit me from behind —

“No…” I hissed, pulling myself away from the vision as though that could make it less real. “No way. You can’t be.”

I took in the pitiful wreck of a woman, misshapen in some parts, barely human in others, so still and so lifeless that I wasn’t sure she wasn’t dead. The idea that she could have been reduced to this seemed impossible.

“Contessa?”

———————————————————————————————

You’re in America? Check the date. You’re elsewhere? Check the tags. Then come back and answer me this:

How many of you did I get?