Chương 41: Chapter 38 - What's Cyrus Up To Anyway?

Cyrus was bored. The past four days had just been a mix of teambuilding exercises, packing, and more training. Today was another day of 'going hunting with Hunter An, Jinu and Dami' and while it had been interesting in the beginning - especially with Iseul's incredibly toned thighs added to the mix - they were beginning to wear thin on his patience. Thankfully he wasn't forced to watch Song like he was a 24 hour voyeur these days.

It was only when he closed his eyes and focused like he was meditating, that he could see the outside world. It looked a lot like the Omnimax from when he'd visited the Ontario Science Center as a child – an almost ethereal globe all around him that he could view from every angle at once. It was always a surreal experience. He'd even gotten better at it.

Cyrus found that it wasn't so much meditation that was required as much as clearing the mind and focusing – like when he lined up a perfect shot after hours and hours of practice on the lacrosse field. He still preferred to 'meditate' though. When in Rome, yada yada.

"Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus. What are we going to do today? No sense in just wasting all my time. I'm supposed to be the Spirit of Haksaekki, not the Spirit of Hikikkomori." Cyrus sighed and rose out of Lotus position, cracking his back and giving his neck a spin. Why did he even have back pain when he was just a lump of Void qi according to Master Crane?

"Talking to yourself eh, Cyrus my old boy. That's the first sign of insanity you know." Sometimes he really did feel insane. All of this was just so surreal. Once upon a time he'd been a plain old Ontario suburbanite. He'd been ready for college, and the big leagues, with a bog standard Korean-Canadian family and one… maybe two sisters. His memory was still a bit fuzzy on all that. Trying to remember too hard just brought back memories of the Void, and of the dance. Then things got painful.

On the bright side, it meant that homesickness and melancholy longing after better days was kept at bay by sheer forgetfulness. Count your blessings! He looked around the star studded sky of the seemingly infinite Void, though he knew that there was a pitch black wall out there somewhere, keeping him locked in here like the most ironic prison in existence. He checked it at least once every day, looking for cracks or some escape to the big fascinating outside world. He took stock of what he had.

One white shirt, all cotton, made in Indonesia (why Indonesia??), with a Canadian flag maple leaf on the front. A pair of Gap jeans that he'd considered time and again cutting into jorts, though he'd eventually decided against it. This world wasn't ready for the ultimate cool that was jorts. And that was it. Nothing in his pockets. No smart watch. No smart phone. No books. Nothing.

"Man, people in games always get to bring cool stuff with them when they get dragged into mythical adventures.

'Take this, it's not safe' and all that. Why couldn't I have been in 'I transferred into another world with access to google and now I have a harem' instead of whatever shitty genre my life currently is?" Cyrus griped. He griped a lot lately. He really needed Song to give him some time outside soon. He hoped the move would be more interesting than the current situation.

"As coach and sensei always said, when your mind starts to wander to bad places, you can right it with some exercise. So let's work this body through the paces. See what it can do." Cyrus raised his arms above his head, then stretched his calves. He reveled in the feeling of muscles pulling and slowly releasing. He dropped next into a sitting split, reaching down to pull his toes and really nail those calves. Don't skip leg day!

When he felt good and limber, he ran a slow jog around the circle of the mindscape, his left hand stuck to the wall to tell him where he was, and to keep him from running headlong into it; that'd been a fun experience the first time. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Then it was time for a hundred squats, a couple dozen sit-ups and push-ups. Sweat ran freely down his face when he was done, though where his body was getting the water for it he didn't know.

When he was done, he flopped down onto his back and stared at the constellations of the crane and big dipper up above.

"Man, I'd kill for a cold beer right now. A cheap pack o' lucky, and some salty and sweet popcorn. Mmm," Cyrus moaned. But he did feel better than he had a moment ago. He levered himself onto his elbows and stared at the floor this time. It was matte black, unreflective and looked almost identical to the 'walls' which was to say it didn't look like much at all.

"What exactly are you?" Cyrus wondered, poking at it.

"Void qi? Please tell me you aren't Song's brainstuff. Ew." The floor was unyielding, with the oddly soft and wet, yet unyielding texture of soapstone. It wasn't overly pleasant, and Cyrus was reminded that this was a world where eldritch horror God things existed. He turned to stare back up at the ceiling once more whispering, "The Infinite Mirror of the Dark Tapestry." The clues were in the names. That was what Crane had said.

"Tapestries. Like long carpet things that Song and co hang in their yurts. They've gotta be woven together. So… if it's a tapestry, could I try… weaving it?" Cyrus thought aloud, tapping his fingers on the floor. Out of curiosity he slowed his breathing and focused his attention, like he did while preparing for a shot, but this time he reached down like he was pinching a needle off the floor.

And when he lifted his hand, the floor came with him, like a long black oily string attached to a tiny shard of darkness held between his fingers. Cyrus stared at it in shock.

"I did it? I did it! Aw…" As his concentration slipped, the long string ripped from his hands as inexorably as gravity and sucked back down into the ground.

"Hmm… what should I make first?" Cyrus considered the ground, or was it his new infinite trove of yarn?

"I've never really woven anything. I stitched my lacrosse equipment, but that's different. How about some baskets? We did those a couple times in First Nations studies." He got to work, slowly spinning his 'thread' in long crisscrossing circles, imagining the tip was a pointy 'needle' as he wove the darkness together. It was hard work, and painstaking. More than once he lost concentration partway through, and the entire thing unraveled in his hands.

Every once in a while, he'd check in on what Song was up to, but it was more of the same. This time with extra yelling at Jinu. It was sometime after midnight that he finished. His fingers were raw with the exertion of pulling the thread over and over, and he had a splitting headache, but in his hand was a small oily black basket. Though it looked more like a lopsided bowl on closer examination.

"Done!" Cyrus crowed, then realized a problem. The bottom of the basket was still attached to the floor by a long black umbilical cord.

"Awww… is it stuck? Makes sense I guess. I'll… leave it alone for now. I don't know if something bad could happen to Song if I cut it out. Maybe I'd be cutting out his neurons too." Cyrus shivered, before looking around the room once more. How could he use this?

"Maybe I can reinforce the walls using the floor? That might be what Master Crane meant by saying I could help make things stronger in here. I'll need to leave an 'access' point for Song to vibrate qi at, of course, but it'll be better than nothing at all."

"But for now," Cyrus said, his jaw setting with determination.

"I'm sick of sitting in this weird 'outside. I need a roof overhead, and I know just what to make!" — Later that evening, Song arrived in his mindscape as part of his evening meditations. What greeted his eyes wasn't just the usual empty darkness filled with twinkling stars, but a strange short black mound in the center of his mindscape. Cyrus was nowhere to be seen. Song walked carefully around the odd structure. It looked like a rice dome, or a pudding that he'd seen one of the merchants hawking in the past.

And on one end, an elongated arch opened to an entrance. It was simple, and slapdash, but it was clearly a building of some sort.

"Cyrus?" Song called, hesitantly.

"Is that you Song!?" Cyrus's voice emerged from the deep dark archway.

"One moment!" There was the faint sound of grunting, and Cyrus soon emerged in a most undignified crawl from within the structure.

"Do you like it? I figured out how to get some work done with all this Void qi! I'm going to see if I can weave something bigger to protect the inside of this place," Cyrus declared proudly.

"I'm getter faster at it all the time!" Song smiled widely.

"That's wonderful news, Cyrus! How does it work?"

"It's a combination of focus, meditation, and perception. This stuff works a lot like thread, but I can't help but wonder if that's just because of how I'm perceiving it."

"How does it work?" Cyrus demonstrated it to Song, who tried it for a few minutes with no success. Song watched Cyrus easily pinch off a piece and start spinning a simple web.

"Why can you do it so easily?" He complained.

"Dunno. We'll need to talk to Master Crane about it when we meet him again. He did say my physiology was… weird. You can cycle qi and I can't, so I guess this makes us even."

"Hmm." Song stood and stretched his legs, circling the building once more.

"What do you call this odd structure? Is it meant to be a wall?" Cyrus scratched bashfully at his nose, and happily declared, "It's a qi- gloo!"