Chương 150: Act 3, Chapter 4: Sophie’s support

Day in the story: 31st December (Wednesday), very early morning, too damn early"I feel like that's going to be a big mistake." My voice was full of bitterness as I stood up from the bed with a blanket over me and moved toward my closet to get some clothes.

"Turn around, Peter. I want to dress, and I am not a little girl anymore."

"You made it sound so much worse than it needed to be," he said as he turned to face the wall. I didn't feel uncomfortable undressing in front of him down to my underwear—it was normal to me. Hell, he had seen me naked when he healed my wounds. But since he has a girlfriend, and I actually like her very much, I would give her that courtesy.

"You really think he is possessed or something?" Sophie interrupted our weird moment of sibling de-bonding.

"Actually, no. I don't think so. But I am sure part of him was affected by the change started by Solitary Twin, so at least a fragment of him is Shattered."

"But he took over Malik's Domain, and you don't like it."

"I just think that he used me somehow to get that power. Shattered, as far as I understand, can't become mages. No one that has undergone the Change that shadows sometimes go through can, because for that an Ideworld person needs to change into the soul core first—and since another change already occurred, it's not possible."

"But he didn't create the Domain, he joined Malik's. So does he need another person for that?" Sophie kept asking as I was putting my pants on.

"It's what Nick explained when he told us about uncoupling his soul from the soul core. Well, not his own per se, but the one of his shadow. The shadow still needs to move into the crystal for one to become a mage. If it's not there, no magic can be channeled—and it can't be there if it's already tangled within the Changed body."

"So the Changed people have Earth's and Ideworld's souls in one body," Peter clarified.

"You can turn around," I told him.

"Yes, Peter is right. When the process of change builds up within the shadow, they can call upon us—people from Earth—to bind us to them. I don't understand the details or what that exactly gives them, but that is what happens. So one can't be a mage and a fully Changed person, and the Shattered are those—since they need both the human part and the shadow part in their transformation."

"So doesn't that confirm that Jason is not Shattered? Why do you think that he is?"

"It's because of what happened to Malik's Domain when he was tested by him and proved worthy." Peter stressed the last word and looked at me intently. I exhaled before I answered.

"You don't have to rub it in my face, bro. Reyes can think him a superhero, for what that's worth. Doesn't mean he's right, or that he understands what Jason truly is."

"The same exact thing applies to you," he shot back.

"Guys, please don't argue," Sophie said.

"What exactly happened to this Domain?"

"I can show you. Since you were there, you'll notice the difference right away," I answered, reaching through the tattoo on my back to summon my spellbook. I focused on the image representing Echo's Domain and asked the world to move the three of us inside it. As the world responded and settled, we stood right in the middle of the Domain. It was no longer a smooth, curved dome surrounding a spherical soul core hanging at its center.

The walls were still reflective, but now they were mirrors—stacked one next to another like some enormous igloo. The floor had turned hexagonal, polished and glassy, while the soul core itself was an almost perfect cylinder that reflected everything around it, giving the entire space an illusion of infinity. It was almost perfect because a vertical split ran down the center, stretching from near the top to almost the very bottom.

From that fissure, shadowlight leaked out, forming a translucent mist around the structure. Where Malik's life had once unfolded clearly in the echoes displayed on the walls, it wasn't that simple anymore. Scenes played out before us, and we could distinguish people—Echo's brother Robbie, his grandmother, and what I assumed from context were his father and mother. But I also saw myself in some of the echoes. Sophie. Our university friends. Jason's parents. That alone wouldn't have been wrong.

Most likely, both of their shadows' souls now existed within the soul core. But instead of showing them interacting directly in those memories, a vague humanoid figure moved through them—the same one in both sets of memories. It looked mostly like a black man would, but parts of its skin were covered in hexagonal mirror fragments. I couldn't tell whose face it had—its features were blurred, its voice multilayered, like Joan's, but masculine in both cases.

"I get it now," Sophie said.

"I understand your concern too, Lex," Peter added.

"I also feel both welcomed here and suppressed, as if someone wanted me out."

"Same here," I replied, reaching out and pulling them both into my arms.

"Let's get out of here. Show's over."

"Okay. I know it doesn't look too good for Jason, but please, both of you, give him a chance. He might not be who he was before, but that could have been done to him without his consent. Or maybe we should assume we still know next to nothing about how magic works, so maybe this is normal when people join the Domain of a dead person," Peter replied as we appeared back in my bedroom.

"That can be a possibility, however improbable it sounds."

"Improbable? All of this is conjecture based on limited data, Alexa. I'll say it once again: treat him like a person, not like a weapon or a veiled threat, and if I am proven to be wrong, I will put him down myself." He said it plainly, and both Sophie and I stood there, unable to speak for a few solid seconds. If Peter said something like that, he meant it. He thought that way, and nothing would stop him.

"Why are you looking at me like that? I didn't say I'd do it right now, and I still believe I'm right about this." Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"That doesn't mean you are," Sophie said, stepping in my defense.

"Neither does it mean she is." Or not.

"You can both be right, or both be wrong. All of the things that have been happening since Ali got caught up in this magical mess are way beyond me, but they're above your heads too. So please stop relying on what always worked for you in the past and start thinking of new methods. I think that aside from being a person, a friend, and someone who went through a traumatic experience, Jason is a shared investment of ours.

We put time and effort into establishing a bond, and you two have vastly different reactions to the unexpected rise in risk. You, Ali, manage it by trying to cut your losses and move on, and you, Peter, are on the verge of the sunk-cost fallacy, where you feel like you've invested so much you can never abandon the project."

"He is not a—""Whatever. It's time you listen to the one with some brain here and no emotions at stake. I like Jason, and I hate him. I'd love to have him around some more, but I wouldn't cry if he was gone. I'd be lying if I said otherwise, and it might make me a bad person, but there it is—the truth, Pete. You like those, don't you?" Peter opened his mouth to respond, but she raised her hand in a clear gesture of refusal and took a breath before continuing.

"So now that we've established that he's an investment with the potential for derailing or making us all richer, what do we do? I'd say we go on with our lives and diversify, which goes exactly against both of your strategies. You focused on getting rid of him, making sure he wouldn't affect other friends, and you on making sure he'd be included. Both of you focused way too many resources on him—too much time, effort, energy, and God knows what else.

Instead, you should treat him like he's there, but not more special than he used to be. Put your effort into meaningful things. That way, if it fails and Jason turns out to actually be some sleeper agent or something, you'll have other things to fall back on. You won't have to put him down, Pete, and you won't feel bad about letting him in, Ali."

"So we live and let live?" I asked.

"Yes. Deal with it like it's not your problem, because it isn't. It's his. And I don't think we're important enough in the grand scheme of things for some Ideworld god to plant a spy among our group." She said it simply, and it made sense—but two of my minds immediately began worrying at that line of thought, already wondering how I could potentially use it.

"I get it, Soph, and while it's a difficult thing for me to just let go of, I will try," I answered, already thinking of ways to stay ahead of a potential disaster.

"I don't like the investment analogy, Sophie. I will do what I think is right by him, whether it hurts me or not in the end."

"You do you," she replied.

"May I talk to you about the Hoppers before we begin preparing for the trip?" I asked, trying to change the subject.

"Sure thing," she said, while Peter caught the cue, waved, and left the room. Sophie sat down on my bed and yawned in an incredibly cute way, covering her mouth.

"Sorry about that. I got out of bed because some neighbor was shouting without any care in the world."

"Yeah. I'll talk to her so she won't repeat that, which is kind of the reason I wanted you to stay."

"So you want to talk to yourself? I'm hardly needed for that. I could be taking a power nap instead. Right after a sleep…" She drifted off mid-thought. I snapped my fingers.

"Focus, please. This is important."

"Okay. I'm focused, boss woman."

"Great. I need you to find me a company that can take a scan of my body and make life-sized replicas I'd be able to paint over. The material isn't important, but the time is sensitive. I want them done as quickly as possible. That probably excludes marble, stone, wood, or wax—so traditional sculpting methods."

"3D printing sounds right up your alley. Isn't that… not artistic enough?"

"Why? Digital art is common nowadays. This would be a digital project, just printed out. I'd need to make some slight adjustments to the output models, though. And I already like the 3D printing idea."

"It's basically what you yourself told me to do. There's not much else that can be done after a 3D scan, right?"

"Oh, girl," I answered simply, then refocused.

"I'd also need a 3D-printed jumping spider, about the size of a cat, with rabbit ears sticking out—and an actual cat with opposable thumbs." [Wait, really?] Not the time. But yes, really.

"A cat-sized spider with thumbs? What sort of project is this?"

"I'm going to make bodies for Anansi to use in here and in Ideworld, as well as a few for my Personas, so I can be in a few places at the same time. They'd have their own personalities, so they could act semi-independently." She looked at me like I was an alien for a second.

"How?"

"I got some upgrades recently. My Domain allows me to animate art within the medium it exists in."

"So no image jumping out of a page?"

"No, but it can jump well enough inside it."

"Wouldn't that mean those models of you or the spider would be useless?"

"What do you mean? Why would they be?"

"If you painted, let's say, a spider's… fur? Do spiders have fur?" I nodded, though it would really be hair.

"So fur and eyes and everything else—wouldn't that just mean those hairs or eyes move, since they're contained within the figurine, or model?" I exhaled, genuinely pleased by the question. I liked explaining these concepts.

"You're partially mistaken, Soph. The eyes would move, like you said, because I'd add them as paint, but the whole thing would be animated as well, allowing Anansi to move and to act. Why? Because in that case the medium isn't the surface of the model I paint on, but the three-dimensional space the model exists in. When I paint normally, I'm making something stuck in two-dimensional space. A printed model or a statue exists in the space of the world, and I'm just making it more expressive by adding paint to it."

"I get it. If I were a painting, I'd exist solely on a page, but I'm a person, and I exist within the canvas of the world."

"Yes. You do get it."

"Wouldn't that put too much strain on your mind? Having more bodies?"

"I'll know when I get to that point, but I can manage a lot of additional senses without many issues. My mind expanded to meet my needs, so I'm fairly certain it's possible."

"How big of a budget are we talking about here?"

"Oh, I didn't think about that at all. You're better at this than I am. I have no idea, but know that I'm willing to pay more for better quality and faster delivery."

"Why do you need this so quickly?"

"I…" I actually paused for a second to think it through.

"I honestly probably just want to play with a new experience as soon as possible, and that's it. I don't have years to learn proper sculpting and do this the old-school way. And with additional bodies, I might be able to earn more money while I focus on other, more important things at the same time."

"Your day is already stretched to the maximum. You need more rest, not less."

"That's a good idea! I might get a body whose only job is resting—just painting and sleeping! You already proved yourself an invaluable asset."

"You joke, but I was serious."

"If I ever feel strained, I'll take a rest. Don't worry. Right now, even with everything squeezing my day dry, I feel perfectly fine."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. Especially last week—it was a much-needed reset for me. No contact from Penrose, none from Joan. No drama from Robert and Akira, or even Thomas, who said Phillip reined in his emotions and was going back to his old ways. The only unsettling thing was Jason's reemergence from Malik's Domain, but that's mild compared to the rollercoaster I've been on for the last few months." She stood up after hearing that.

"Okay, that's good to hear. If the meeting is over, I'd like to take that power nap after all, since I won't be sleeping much tonight."