19. Guardian

“…I think it’s a eulogy,” I say, taking a moment to decide on a specific translation. “‘There is no justice greater than freedom, and thus no afterlife deeper than where he rests.'”

“Hmm,” Melpomene frowns. “And deeper is… better, yes?”

“I think so,” I nod. “I guess this statue was Antipathy Martin Luther King Jr. or something. It’s impressive it managed to stay so intact all this time.”

Thea, Melpomene, and I are wandering the town, our investigation of the huge central building offering no further insight. Thea collected as much artifact scrap as she could carry on her magic hovering disc thingy, and now she’s doing the same around town while Melpomene and I take in the sights.

“It’s so strange to see the ruins of a civilization so much like our own,” Melpomene says softly. “Ancient civilizations on Earth may have had the advantage of being human to help us empathize with them, but there’s something uniquely chilling about a dead civilization that probably had tablets and smartphones. Their level of technology exceeded ours, but not by all that much in the grand scheme of things.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty humanlike as freaky tentacle monsters go,” I agree. “It’s weird. They’re from a completely different universe. The odds of their culture developing so similarly are astronomically small.”

“No, they aren’t,” Melpomene says. “That claim only holds true as a logical assumption if emotions are arbitrary qualia, like humanity used to think. But there is power to them. Therefore, there’s an evolutionary advantage to having the specific emotional range we happen to fall within. Of course other species would evolve this way. Of course they would develop cultures, develop prejudices, develop slavery, and then eventually push back against it. Disgust, fear, hatred, anger… it’s all baked into the very foundation of the universe. They were not so different to us, Luna. And we are not so different from them. That’s why we must learn from their mistakes. If we don’t, we are doomed to repeat them.”

I stare up at the statue with her, weighing those words along with all the others she’s said to me since this started. For a person so concerned about the future, she’s awfully self-destructive. I quickly track down Thea’s magical signature and ensure it’s far enough away before responding.

“Just spitballing here,” I venture, “but has it ever occurred to you that one of those mistakes might have been creating a robotic torture-powered soul enslaver?”

“It has, as a matter of fact,” Melpomene answers flatly. “But unless you know of some other body you could house your soul in, I suggest you get used to it. As mentioned, yours is otherwise occupied.”

“Okay, but—”

“Shut up,” Melpomene snaps, and my voice stops working. “I only brought you here to assist with collecting knowledge. I don’t have the patience to tolerate your complaints. Stay on task.”

I don’t outwardly react, but I feel any thought of berating her become impossible to follow through on, at least for now. Ugh. I guess even when she’s in a good mood, she’s still a bitch. I give in to the urge to resume my analysis of the statue, the suite of sensory equipment in my head investigating the stonework for cracks and other imperfections. Overall, it has held up remarkably well, especially in comparison to the dilapidated buildings surrounding the small courtyard the piece is displayed in. The statue itself is of an Antipathy, of course, carved with one set of tentacles forming a large O above his head and the other set of tentacles splayed out above him like he’s trying to do the YMCA dance.

“Back on topic then,” I say, “I think my body does raise an important question. Why is there an immaculately preserved statue of Tentacle Abraham Lincoln here in the city of the people who made the Slavery Optimiser Zero-Point-Nine? It seems a little incongruous.”

Melpomene nods, conceding the point.

“It is odd, but there are so many possibilities it’s difficult to narrow them down. Though I’m loath to believe anything the Preservers have told us, it is entirely possible they were being honest when they said the Antipathy went mad. So much of what we have seen so far simply doesn’t match the level of spite present in the more recently developed artifacts of their civilization. Plus there’s the simple fact that they call themselves ‘Antipathy.’ I seriously doubt that was the name of their species before the war; it would be like if, at the dawn of language itself, humanity just unanimously decided to call themselves ‘the haters.'”

Pfft. I mean…

“That would be super accurate though,” I point out, and Melpomene’s lips twitch into a smile fills me with bubbles of satisfaction.

“Perhaps, but it’s still not something the species as a whole would actually do. ‘Antipathy’ seems more like the name of a faction, a rebel group. Yet it’s so pervasive I’ve yet to find any references to another name.”

“Hence they all went mad,” I say. “Yeah. The faction idea still makes a lot of sense, though. If they took over, they could have just censored other names. But where do the Preservers come in? If the Antipathy were having a civil war, couldn’t the Preservers have just stayed out of it?”

“That’s the other thing. I’m not sure I believe there was a civil war,” Melpomene hums. “Just look around. The city is in poor shape, but there’s no sign of battle. The buildings have collapsed, but they haven’t been blown up. I also haven’t seen any signs of burnt or melted materials that would be relatively common in a magical fight. If the Antipathy were fighting amongst themselves, it certainly wasn’t here.”

I look around, double-checking her claim and coming up with the same conclusion. By looking at nearby piles of rubble I can check the geometric outline of each shattered piece and match it to other chunks of stone in the same pile, reassembling the puzzle. The way everything broke is consistent with the ruins collapsing to mere wear and gravity. There’s no signs of material being flung a substantial distance away or being damaged by outside sources prior to the collapse.

“You’re right,” I confirm. “So what happened to this city? Did the magical apocalypse that broke the universe just happen to kill everyone but leave their houses intact?”

“It must have,” Melpomene says. “The question is why.”

“And how, isn’t it?”

“Partially,” Melpomene answers. “I don’t know the details on how the Antipathy broke their entire universe, but it clearly created an excess of free-floating magic in the process. They would have all died in the same way you nearly did.”

Hmm. Catastrophic soul damage from foreign magical energy getting osmosed inside, like a human cell not knowing how to stop absorbing water. I guess my body’s plating being largely impermeable to magic protects me now, but… no, even when I open my plates I don’t feel like my soul is getting attacked by the atmosphere. Maybe it has something to do with the crystals?

“Actually, I have a question about that,” I say. “The black mist stuff is magical energy, right? So why do you guys go through all the trouble of stealing emotions from abusive households if the entire atmosphere outside your house is mostly magic?”

Melpomene rolls her eyes and huffs, apparently offended about having to explain such an amateurish question. Sorry, master!

“Nanaya has taught you what all the different colors of magic are, right?”

“I mean, she didn’t tell me about black,” I say.

“She didn’t have to. Think about it. What color is black?”

Well, I guess my first thought would be that it was hate or something, but I guess that’s covered by purple. Are there any major emotions missing? No, I’m thinking about this wrong. What color is black?

“Is it just everything mixed together?” I ask.

“Exactly,” Melpomene confirms. “And I’m sure you’ve noticed, but magical warriors tend to optimize towards a single color wherever possible. Using other emotions is certainly doable, but even then you’d never want to mix different emotions into a single spell unless you knew exactly what you were doing. The magic in the atmosphere of the Dark World, however, is always mixed and never consistent. It is a tumultuous slurry of emotions, and worse, it’s an uncountable number of different people’s emotions. Attempting to use it as a source of power would be destined to backfire dramatically. The emotion that generates any given iota of magic is not irrelevant. Magic might be power, but it is a power that is owned. It comes from a soul. If you steal it, it must be carefully used in a manner consistent with the reason its soul created it. Joy must be used in a manner which would bring them joy. Anger must be used in a manner that would bring them anger. With the mist, that is all but impossible.”

Interesting. Very interesting. Magic always wants to act in accordance with the will that created it. That feels… correct. Consistent with the vague recollections my body lets me have of the times I understood magic well enough to cast spells of my own. Is this why that knowledge gets locked away? If magic is always by its very nature attempting to fulfill my true desires and feelings, I guess it would stand to reason it would be an excellent tool for escaping the prison I’m in. Even if I was actively trying to cast a spell that does something completely different, any spell I cast could potentially work to free me instead.

Spellcraft is, presumably, designed explicitly to direct magic in ways that minimize this risk. It would just be stupid if it wasn’t. Magic can already hypothetically do anything without the structure of a spell directing it, so what else would the formula be for if not reliability? Yet Melpomene is implying that even with that guidance, a spell can go wild if the emotion fueling it contradicts it enough. I guess knowing this is technically a bad thing, because it makes me less capable of doing it, but I unfortunately can’t delete this thought process because it is too directly tied to a conversation with Melpomene.

Still. It’s a nice bit of hope to hang on to. If things get bad enough, maybe I really will be able to free myself by accident.

“Well, I think we’ve seen all we can see around here,” I say, changing the subject.

“You’re probably right,” Melpomene agrees. “It’s beautiful though, isn’t it? I could sit here all day. Unfortunately, we do need to leave before the convergence ends.”

“Should we get going, then?” I ask. “It will probably take a while to convince Thea to stop scavenging.”

Melpomene smiles fondly.

“I suppose it will,” she agrees. “Honestly, I haven’t seen her this excited in years. Even if you couldn’t translate for me, I might keep you with us just for that.”

Uh. I’m not really sure how to feel about that one. Melpomene looks happy again, though, and I’m getting a little tired of not letting myself take that win. That’s part of my plan, remember? Make the boss happy enough, and I might even get promoted to a position I can quit.

Tracking down the little green otter is easy enough. She’s actively casting a spell in order to carry all of the junk she picked up, so Melpomene and I can both pinpoint her location with ease. We find her on the edge of town, rummaging through a squat building with walls thick and sturdy enough to survive the apocalypse.

“Thea?” Melpomene calls out as we walk in. “We need to get going soon, dear.”

“Give me just a sec!” Thea insists. “This place has so much good tech. We’ve hit pay dirt on this one.”

“Really?” Melpomene says, suddenly intrigued. “What kind of tech?”

“I have no idea!” Thea answers gleefully. “I’ve never seen this stuff before! It’s magic-powered, though, so this could be a huge learning experience. This could be the missing link I was trying to find to bridge the gap between those two different sizes of communicator… aagh! It’s taking everything I have to not just open these babies up right here.”

“I’ll help you load it all up,” I offer, walking into the room and spotting rows upon rows of a chunky rectangular artifact slotted into little holders on the walls.

“Luna! Hey! Read this!” Thea insists, holding one of the artifacts up to my face and needlessly pointing out the words engraved on it.

“It says ‘stormbreaker,'” I tell her. “One word.”

“Woah!” Thea grins. “That’s awesome!”

“It’s a portmanteau, technically, so I’m pretty sure it’s another relatively meaningless brand name,” I explain. “It probably just says that to seem cool.”

“Okay, but what if it actually breaks storms!?” Thea vibrates. “What if you could just point this baby at a hurricane and just—kazap!”

“Then you are probably holding a weapon of mass destruction, and you should be careful with it,” Melpomene answers. Thea groans and rolls her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

We retrieve the devices, stacking them all on Thea’s disc. It’s a bit of a precarious pyramid, but we manage it. There’s barely enough space for the three of us to pack on together, but soon enough we’re up and away. The trip back to the wall of mist is simple enough, giving me plenty of time to think about everything we’ve seen today.

In terms of artifacts, there has been a surprising mix of magic and non-magic powered technology. Some of it is impossible to identify, but some of it—like the boxes full of decomposed mush—are more easily identifiable as refrigerators or other food storage. Even with the gap in technology, we can tell when something was originally a lighting fixture, or a plumbing system, or other simple things because the fundamentals of how they work are still more or less the same as our versions of them. The only exception are the lighting fixtures that still glow in the undersides of the archways we saw on the way here: Thea ended up taking one apart and found that they’re actually tubes of liquid full of bioluminescent creatures. Which, you know, was kind of sick, but it made me very sad when all of the stuff poured out onto the ground.

We pass through the barrier of mist, my sensors going haywire for a moment before we end up back in the liminal space. We find Nanaya pacing angry circles in the ground, a pair of girls trussed up in glowing red string at her feet. They’re both unconscious, breathing shallowly and outside their incarnate forms, just normal humans. They do, of course, both have transformation stones, but I guess they couldn’t sustain their magical girl forms after whatever Nanaya did to them.

Nanaya quickly notices us, and then rounds on us immediately.

“Finally!” she snaps. “Where the hell were you!?”

Melpomene straightens up, a little taken aback.

“You know exactly where we were. Did something—”

“They took Anath!” Nanaya interrupts her.

That stops everyone short.

“What? What happened?” Melpomene demands.

“Well she lost, obviously,” Nanaya growls. “I told you she was over her head. She barely managed to fight Fulgora by herself, so what did you think would happen if the entire other team of Guardians attacked her as well?”

“We’ll get her back,” Melpomene insists.

“You’re damn fucking right we will. And you’re going to help me.”

Nanaya yanks one of the girls up by the threads binding her and tosses her at Melpomene. Awkwardly, Melpomene catches her.

“We’re raiding the Guardian base. Now. These two will get us inside.”

“Woah, woah, what?” Thea asks. “Can we just do that?”

“If we’re fast enough? Yes,” Melpomene confirms, a sharp frown on her face. “I would have preferred to stay further under the radar, but I suppose needs must. Nanaya and I will find the Guardian base holding Anath and infiltrate it with these two as our keys.”

She indicates the unconscious girl in her arms.

“The two of you should head back to the castle. Defend yourselves and the artifacts if necessary. They are too valuable to lose.”

“O-of course,” Thea nods, clearly shaken. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? Actually, give me one sec.”

She dives into her pile of artifacts, for a moment visible only as a tail flicking out of the scrap metal. She eventually emerges with some materials, and with her book open she starts quickly reshaping them, disassembling and recombining various parts until ultimately constructing what looks like a simple metal box about the size of my palm. She hands it to Melpomene.

“A tracker,” she says. “We’ll be able to find the entrances if this is inside their base. If you guys aren’t back in a few hours, we’re going in after you.”

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“Thank you, Thea,” Melpomene smiles at her. “I’ll see if I can hide it somewhere inside, but I doubt we’ll need it. The girls in our city can’t stop us. I just wish we didn’t have to make them aware of that fact quite so early. This will be our only opportunity to perform a raid like this relatively unopposed.”

“Well, you should have thought of that before letting Anath run off by herself again,” Nanaya snaps at her.

“Don’t act like you couldn’t have stopped her,” Melpomene counters testily. “She wanted to go, and we both thought she’d be stable enough to escape if things got bad. Quit blaming me for this. Let’s just get on with it.”

“Fine,” Nanaya spits. Summoning her viola, she plays a screeching note that has both magical girls waking up screaming and clutching their ears.

“You are going to show us how to enter the base in Fort Collins,” Nanaya orders. “Understand?”

I suppose their whimpers get taken as an affirmative, because Nanaya and Melpomene leap away shortly afterwards, dashing across the rooftops towards the edge of the liminal zone. I clench my hands into fists, but it’s the only expression of disapproval I can physically manage. Saving those girls is beyond me while my master has a use for them.

“I hope they all get out okay,” Thea says softly.

I nod. With the magical girls so close and the likelihood of running into another on the way back, I can’t really say anything.

“Well, come on. We have to get this stuff back home. Mel and Nana are really gonna kick the hornet’s nest here.”

We load back up onto her disc and fly off in more or less the same direction as Mel and Nanaya. Thea goes a little slower than we did on the way here, though, either because of the extra weight or because she’s trying to make distance between us and the other two. Ideally, Thea and I will make it back to the castle while all the attention is on Melpomene and Nanaya, but who knows what will happen.

I just hope I don’t have to fight.

– – –

Groggily, I blink my eyes open, taking in the bright white ceiling above me, the space connecting it to the walls organically curved rather than cornered. I’m at base, I guess. What am I doing at base again…?

“Fulgora-san!”

Fulgora what? Who said that? Wait, I remember.

“Susan?” I groggily ask, sitting up and looking around. Sure enough, there’s a short asian girl standing next to the bed I woke up on. She no longer has animal ears on her head, seeming completely back in human form. I glance down at myself and see that I have also fallen out of my incarnate form. I guess that explains why I woke up.

For some reason, though, she’s still holding Anath over her shoulder.

“You are okay!” Susan beams. “I was very worried when you did not become normal again. How did you hold incarnate form without having awake?”

“Obstinance,” I grunt. “Why are you still holding Anath? If she wakes up while we’re in human form, she will destroy us.”

“Yes, etto… where do we put her?” she asks. “And where is your Preserver?”

I blink.

“Are they not around?” I ask. “Uma’tama? Huh. Well, that’s two good questions, I guess. Uma’tama!”

I pull out my phone as I get off the bed, dialing the number they always call me with. Heading out into the hall, I look back and forth to figure out which room I’m in. Do we have a place to lock people up? I don’t think we have a dedicated prison or anything, but there are some sturdy rooms and if nothing else we can take her transformation stone. A quick glance at her indicates that Susan has at least thought of that much; she’s no longer wearing the choker that houses her stone.

“Thank you for—” Uma’tama answers.

“Uma! Where are you?”

“—contacting us through the Earth cellular phone network service. I am not connected at the moment and may not currently exist within your universe. Please leave your name and number after the little beepy noise and we will return your call as soon as I figure out how to check my messages. Goodbye!”

The answering machine beeps and I nearly snap my phone in half. Okay! That’s fine. This is fine. Where’s the rest of my team? Are Veritas and Aurora okay? I guess I need to shift into an incarnate form if I want to track them down, but my Fulgora body is too injured and I just really don’t want to be Minerva right now.

Wait, why not? This is kind of an important situation. Why do I keep getting so uncomfortable with my Minerva body sometimes but I’m totally fine with it at other times?

Well, I definitely don’t want someone I just met to find out I’m both Fulgora and Minerva.

Well I don’t want that either, but this isn’t really a situation where we can worry about that.

‘We?’ ‘Either?’ Why do I keep thinking shit like that? Did my mind finally crack?

We also don’t have time to worry about the fact that we’re crazy! Come on, just let me take over already.

What the fuck?

“Oɴᴄᴇ Aɢᴀɪɴ, I Fɪɢʜᴛ.”