Chương 17: Act 1, Chapter 17: Gunmetal alchemist

Day in the story: 30th September (Tuesday) I walked for at least an hour before I reached the edge of the park. The trees gradually shrank, thinning out until I felt safe enough to jump down. I'd heard more howling along the way. Those low, guttural sounds echoing through the canopy and though I could smell them watching me, those strange creatures never attacked again. Maybe they were waiting for something. Or maybe they'd learned not to try. I dropped down onto the grass.

On the other side of the park, just like back home, was a street flanked by storefronts and service shops. It looked almost identical to Earth, eerily so. The same blocky signage, the same window displays. It was uncanny, like stepping into a dream someone else had copied from memory. Everything was closed, of course. But that wasn't something that could stop a thief. There was this place I'd never dared visit in my own world: Big Mike's Guns n' Ammo.

If I was going to fight again and I surely would, I didn't want to rely solely on paint and luck. I wanted to shoot. I looked down the road wondering about the lack of cars, right when I saw one pass by. And another behind it. Some of them moved slowly, too smoothly, some rushed in frantic speeds. Some people inside sat motionless like statues. Something about them didn't feel right. Not quite human. While others behaved quite normal, as if taken a ride straight from my parts of the city.

Maybe people here are twisted like the animals are, I thought. Let's hope I don't have to find out. I crossed the street and passed rows of darkened windows until I stood before Big Mike's. It looked exactly like the one back home. Closed up, but lights still on. I considered kicking the door in, but there was no reason to be so uncivilized. Instead, I tossed my makeshift spear aside, took out my black spray paint and painted a hole—just big enough to slip through—on the shop's reinforced front window.

Bulletproof glass thick enough to stop a dozen rounds. Be a hole, I thought, pressing my hand against the painted surface. Peter had passed his hand clean through the blackness and back again unharmed. Still, something about this magic unsettled me. It didn't erase matter, it made it forgot it even existed. The paint didn't cut the window but it convinced the space that it was empty instead. Like the idea of a hole, painted into reality. I took a breath, crouched and leapt through in a single motion.

An acrobat's dive into nothing that turned into a quick roll on the other side. I breathed out, after stopping. I was glad that this daring attempt did not end with me bumping my head against the reinforced glass. And when inside, surrounded by racks of pistols, rifles and ammunition, I turned back to the hole, touched the painted edge and released my Authority. It sealed up without a trace. No unexpected guests while I'm doing my shopping, thanks. The shop was silent.

Rows of weapons lined the walls and glass display cases like museum artifacts. Rifles, shotguns, revolvers, automatics, each one a study in form and function. It smelled like metal, oil, dust and something else I couldn't quite place. I walked slowly down the central aisle, the soles of my boots thudding softly on the tile. My eyes traced over stocks and barrels, not really reading the labels. I wasn't here for brands or stats. I was here for something I that felt right to me.

I passed an old M1 Garand then something bullpup and matte black, probably military surplus. They all looked so loud. Messy. The kind of weapons that shattered shoulders and perforated lungs. Too dramatic for me. I stopped at a display of revolvers, their fat cylinders glinting under the overhead lights. They had weight and simplicity. Something romantic in their violence. But they reminded me too much of cowboy stories and last stands. I didn't want to make a statement. I wanted to survive.

Further down the wall, I saw a set of long-barreled pistols. Sleek, modern semi-automatics. Muzzle brake and polymer grips. Weapons designed for someone who didn't want to make mistakes. After a moment of gazing my sight finally stopped at one of the weapons. I opened the case and picked it up. It was cold and heavy, but not awkward. Its weight settled into my palm like it belonged there. I tested the balance, aimed it casually at the floor, sighted down the barrel. It was long enough and seemed precise.

A shooter's weapon. Simple too and not made for flair. Made to efficiently end a threat. I liked that. When I held it, something seemed to be stirring inside. It felt like it held an Authority of its own. Something both destructive and creative at the same time. Mr. Penrose once told me,"You don't pick a weapon because you love it. You pick it because it makes you efficient." He said that after handing me a kitchen knife and telling me to gut a deer. I hadn't cried that time, but my hands had shaken for a while.

This pistol didn't make my hands shake. It felt like we knew each other already, however insane that sounded. I found a spare magazine and some rounds in the drawer behind the counter. I loaded it with the familiarity of someone who'd practiced but never used—mechanically smooth, but not muscle memory yet. Still, it clicked together. This was a gun that seemed like something I'd hold already, wearing different face and name.

Déjà vu and jamais vu collided together to create a feeling of it being both alien and familiar at the same time. I sat down cross-legged on the floor behind the counter, placed the firearm gently in front of me and opened my paint pouch. Spray paint wasn't ideal for a weapon like that. Once warmed, it could seep into a moving mechanism and jam it. But I was precise and fairly certain that, once infused with my power, the paint would no longer remain merely paint.

It would stop being a substance and become something else entirely. I pulled out silver, black and blue then—cool colors. Precise ones. Not the emotional chaos of yellow and green. I did not want a simple fire, and no rot either. This would be clarity of futuristic weapon. I shook the cans slowly, listening to the rattle, then started painting. The black came first. I sprayed it lightly over the barrel, letting it sink into the metal's matte finish, then layered in blue streaks that shimmered faintly in the light.

I didn't want it to look militarized, I wanted it clean. Like something pulled from a sci-fi weapon rack. I added streaks of silver, highlighting the barrel edges, the slide, the magazine baseplate. Subtle detailing, like light glinting off something superconductive. I touched the side of the grip and began painting a delicate set of parallel lines across the body, an aesthetic mimicry of a railgun's rails.

I read about them after Zoe mentioned them on the bus ride—they sounded pretty damn cool and would go along well with my power armor. I layered the top with two faint blue coils that wrapped around an imaginary core. The shape of it changed in my mind as I painted and so did its purpose.

"Be the railgun." I whispered when the paint settled and dried, nearly glowing under the shop lights. Blue arcs of light danced around my fingertips, extending toward the pistol like silken threads of color. It did not feel the same as the chaos of the acid spray. It wasn't the raw crack of metallic infusion from before either. As those small strands of light touched and wrapped themselves around the weapon it felt refined. I was syncing with something—with its nature—not merely bending it to my will.

The pistol didn't change shape when it claimed all of that illumination, but it felt different now. I flicked the safety and chambered a round. Held it ready. This was the weapon I would carry. It was balanced and light, and yet carried some unspeakable capacity for destruction within itself. Of course that wouldn't save me, not by itself. But it would give me a moment, a chance to make the right choice when there was no time to think. A weapon like this needed a name though. Not just for fun.

Not for some childish fantasy of wielding power. It was something deeper than that, naming was about acknowledging. Accepting that this thing was now a part of me, but also something with its own volition, a proof that it carried something within, even before I placed my magic inside. It had to be something precise. Something balanced. Something that remembered the line between destruction and necessity.

Equinox, was the first thought that sparked in my mind—it came almost like a whisper—and it immediately felt right. A name of symmetry. Day and night in equal measure. I turned the weapon in my palm slowly, admiring the sleek edges, the iridescent finish of the painted rails now settled into a cool metallic gleam.

"Equinox," I murmured aloud, testing the name on my tongue. It suited the weight of the thing. Then, without quite meaning to, I added, "You like that, don't you?" I chuckled under my breath and ran a hand over my mask. The laughter didn't echo, it stayed right there in my chest, dry and a little frayed.

"Never mind. Let's get you something to eat, Noxy." That part would stay. Noxy. It sounded more personal and more intimate. As if naming it again softened it. I moved toward the back wall where the ammunition was stored behind thick glass, cracked it open and began gathering supplies. I found boxes of 9mm rounds. Not the flashiest, not the most brutal, but common, efficient and reliable. They did their job without screaming about it. Six extra magazines, fifteen rounds each, ninety rounds in total.

Adding that to the full mag I'd already loaded into Noxy earlier and I had one hundred and five bullets in all. More than enough, unless I really pissed off the entire ecosystem of this world again. Which, if I would be honest with myself, was never off the table. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I packed the mags into a small side pouch I'd found near the register.

Some kind of tactical bag, black canvas with a hard-shell interior and a dozen slots stitched with care. I appreciated good stitching. And to finish it off I strapped on a shoulder holster, that was previously draped over a mannequin's arm like it was waiting for someone specific. I felt like I could be that someone. It hugged my ribs. Sat clean beneath my jacket where I slid Equinox into place. I made my way back to the front of the shop, where my black-painted hole still hung in the window.

I touched the edge, infused it with the cool not-there-ness of it. I crouched low, took one last look at the shelves of silent weapons and launched myself through the hole. And I stepped out into the dark, quiet street, armed and steady. The mask clung to my face like second skin, my fingers twitched with leftover tension from the last fight and my eyes lifted to the end of the street, where the bridge stood like a waiting god.

It loomed above the city, vast and immovable, its backbone a series of steel towers stitched together with thick, sweeping cables that arced into the night like ribs of some slumbering colossus. From here, it swallowed the skyline. And at its highest point, impossibly perched atop the nearest tower, was something out of a fever dream: a castle. An actual, stone-built, battlement-lined, torch-lit castle.

Turrets, parapets, arched windows glowing faintly with flickers of orange torchlight, like some ancient monarch had decided to colonize the remnants of modern infrastructure. I moved toward it. The cars passing along the street now glided more like those in my world, though I had no idea why. Only a few behaved erratically. People crowded the sidewalk as well, and if not for a handful of strangely distorted figures—something uncanny about them—I wouldn't have known they weren't human. Still, something was wrong.

Something was wrong with all of it. At the edge of the bridge, where the pavement met service grates and old access walkways, the scent changed. The air was colder here. It was metallic and sharp, filled with the bite of rust, ozone and long-faded storms. I stopped in front of first of the massive cables that weren't what I expected when I saw them from afar. I quickly realized that they were absurdly wide and thick. Made of steel and concrete alike.

I ran my hand over it and the texture beneath felt more like hardened roots than engineered metal. They twisted upward at an incline, wrapping the tower like titanic serpents, coiling toward the castle in smooth, impossible curves. I jumped onto it. The surface was rough, ribbed for traction and groaned faintly underfoot. My balance held, paint-enhanced reflexes anchoring me like a wire-walker. One hand on my satchel, the other brushing the edge of my jacket.

I felt the comforting weight of Equinox, against my ribs.

"I guess we're doing this," I murmured. Each step grew heavier the higher I climbed. The castle was no illusion; it became more detailed with every vertical foot. Banners fluttered in the wind. High above, torchlight flickered within narrow window slits. That was when I understood that this world wasn't copying Earth and failing. It was refracting it through a prism of concepts unknown to me at the time—concepts I intended to learn through and through. I wanted answers and I wanted height. A place to think.

And that meant reaching the top. The wind picked up, sharper now, threading through my coat and tugging at my braid. The city shrank below, a mess of flickering lights and moving traffic. Then, halfway up the cable, I saw statues scattered along the upper arches and ledges of the tower. Figures frozen in hunched poses, wings half-unfurled, claws ready, faces twisted in snarls of stone. Gargoyles. Because of course there were gargoyles. I slowed, my eyes scanning them. Then one moved. A twitch, a claw flexing.

A head turning. A silent acknowledgment of my presence. Followed by dust and small debris falling of as the outer layer of some old crust broke off. It launched itself from the tower like a cannonball of stone and sinew, wings snapping wide, eyes glowing with faint purple fire. My hand went to Noxy in a blur, instinct driving faster than thought. He was out, warm and ready. I raised him with both hands, planted my feet and fired. The sound— holy fucking hell —the sound, was thunder wrapped in a scream of God.

A stream of warmth ran down my neck, while blue-white light raced through the barrel, spiraling down in arcs of raw current. The air ignited with the smell of burning ozone. The moment the trigger clicked, the recoil hit like a truck. My reinforced frame held, but it hurt. The shock rattled through my forearms, slammed into my shoulder and rang down my spine like a hammer to the ribs. I bit back a gasp and staggered, thrown back to hit the cable below as my body slid over its surface.

The gargoyle however was gone entirely. It exploded mid-air, fragments of black stone, metal and ash raining down onto the road and river far below. I exhaled through clenched teeth.

"Okay, Noxy… we're definitely going to need to work on your finesse." I readjusted and tucked him back to my ribs, while slowly standing up. The other statues hadn't moved yet, but they would. I could feel their awareness. They were watching and waiting for the right moment. I ducked and laid down behind one of the thicker support ribs, breathing slow and centering. I'd faced worse and I knew it. Shiroi was a fucking demon. Squirrel monsters I killed in what felt like just moments ago were feral and unpredictable.

This was just… moving rocks. Still, something had changed. Penrose always taught me to pay attention to details and something in my last shot stood out. My magic couldn't leave the medium directly, but some of its physical effects could. I'd noticed the warmth of my fire before, but not the light it gave off. Outside during the day, it had simply been too bright to see. I'd heard the quiet hum of electricity before, too.

But now, when I fired Noxy, I could see the light travel the length of the barrel and hear the sharp thunderclap of the electromagnetic discharge. So not only force itself, but sound and light too. Tools and weapons I could use. I wondered about it all for a while, curled against the cold steel ridge of the cable, my back pressed into the curve of the arch, half-hidden from the wind.

The air this high up bit through my jacket, carrying the sting of altitude and the faint copper scent of ozone left behind by Noxy's discharge. My shoulder throbbed. My wrists ached. The recoil had been vicious. It had gone straight to the bones. If I hadn't been reinforced, that shot would've shattered me. Maybe even killed me outright. I'd known he was powerful, but this… this was overkill. A handheld railgun, even a beautiful one, was still a railgun.

I reached inside myself, where the abstract meets the real and nudged his presence. Be a pistol again, I thought—a quiet plea layered in regret and survival. Not because I didn't appreciate him in his destructive form. But because I wanted to live long enough to use him again. I felt it shift, the weight at my ribs recalibrating, dialing back, becoming simpler. And I was cold. I pulled my satchel close and rummaged through its folds until I found what I needed, one of my fire pieces.

A small, palm-sized square of thick paper, painted edge to edge in saturated orange, red and black. Originally, I'd intended it as a weapon. But here and now, I needed it to be something quieter. Something made for humans. I slid it between two of the cable ridges, tucking it tight so the wind couldn't steal it. The steel was cold enough to bite my fingertips through gloves. Be the fire, I whispered in thought, touching the edges of the paint. Keep me warm.

The image didn't burn this time, there were no raw edges left to curl and smolder, no chain reaction of destruction. Just magic, pure and steady. The whole painting glowed softly, as if it were backlit from within. And then, heat finally reached me. It radiated out gently, just enough to take the frost from the air. The painted flame flickered without consuming itself, giving off a soft, pulsing light—like a campfire inside the woods.

I sat beside it, letting the heat soak into my legs and chest, watching the wind stir and then sidestep me like I wasn't worth the effort. My breath slowed. My muscles stopped shivering. Funny, how sometimes the most violent tools become your gentlest comforts. I leaned my head back against the curved steel, eyes briefly closing and let myself rest, just for a moment.

"He was right after all." The voice slipped into my ears just as my eyes fluttered open. For a heartbeat, I had no idea where I was, then the cold steel at my back, the flickering warmth beside me and the aching pulse along my shoulder reminded me. The bridge. The fire. Noxy. The castle. Had I fallen asleep? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? Hovering in front of me, hands on her hips and glowing with that same silvery brilliance I remembered from the rooftop, was a figure small and radiant.

The same kind of being I'd seen once when I first entered the Ideworld, like a streak of starlight poured into human shape. This one was shaped like a woman I knew though: slim, tall in proportion, with flowing silver hair and wide, luminous eyes. She pulsed with moonlight rather than reflected it.

"Zoe?" I asked, voice cracking a little from sleep and cold.

"Of course it's me," she said, arching a glowing eyebrow.

"Peter said you'd be dumb enough to come through again. I told him you wouldn't. Guess I was wrong. Guess he really is your brother after all. Nice mask, by the way." Her tone was a strange cocktail: condescending, amused, but supportive. Like an older sister who couldn't decide between laughing or scolding. But I didn't care. Seeing her like this—whole and glowing, but most importantly here— it brought a ridiculous wave of comfort.

"So that's what seers look like when they enter the Ideworld?"

"Yeah. If we do it through dreams," she said, floating slowly around the ridge.

"Not exactly easy to manage."

"You said you hadn't done it in a long time."

"I hadn't." Her glow dimmed slightly.

"But Peter's my person now. And he was worried about you. So, when we went to sleep, I decided to peek in. Just to prove him wrong." She grinned, rolling her eyes.

"Clearly that backfired."

"Sorry about that part," I said with a half-smile.

"How did you even find me?"

"I checked the park first, the one where we found the entrance. Found a few dead squirrels. That gave me the general vibe," she said, circling slowly above my makeshift fire.

"Then I heard the thunder from this direction and followed it. Saw the glow. Found you. Simple." She tilted her head, studying the flickering fire with curiosity.

"You can store fire in a painting?"

"Kind of," I said.

"It's not real fire. Not exactly. I make it believe it's fire. It can't leave the medium I painted it on, none of my creations can, but they behave like what they think they are. This one believes it's warm. So, it is." She crouched mid-air, toes barely grazing the steel as she reached toward the flame.

"So, if you painted it on, say, wood—?"

"It'd burn for real. Then the real flame would spread. It's the painting that carries the illusion, but the results can chain-react into the real world."

"Fantastic," she whispered, twirling around it like a slow orbiting moon, basking in its glow. Then her eyes returned to mine.

"So, your portal really closed?"

"Yeah. It was already gone by the time I stepped through. No sphere, no shimmer, no shadows, nothing. I thought they were supposed to stay open twenty-four hours?"

"They are. That's what my grandmother always said. I don't know why it would close early. I'm sorry, Lex."

"Don't be. Shit happens. That's life." I shrugged and winced as pain lanced through my shoulder.

"I'll find another way out. Always do."

"You could go back through your Domain," she said, hovering closer.

"It always lets you return. But you'd have to reach it."

"Yeah. I figured that might be my exit card. But first…" I nodded toward the towering silhouette overhead.

"I want to check out the castle. Something tells me it's not just for show." She blinked, wide-eyed.

"You're actually going in?"

"Why not? What's the worst that could happen?" I smiled.

"You're not afraid of the things up here?"

"I haven't had a reason to be yet. Besides, can any of them even hurt you?"

"I don't know. But I am sure I'd feel it if they could. They'd have authority of their own." She hovered silently for a beat, then sighed.

"I could be your eyes. Scout ahead if you want. But I might disappear if I wake up suddenly."

"You don't have to, Zoe. You've already done more than enough, just by finding me here." She didn't answer that. Just stared quietly at the fire a while longer, letting its painted warmth settle around us.

"You were right," she said eventually.

"There is something up there."

"What do you mean?"

"I can feel a strong soulmark in that castle. Very strong. Maybe the strongest I've ever sensed in the Ideworld."

"You can feel them?" I asked, sitting up straighter. She nodded.

"That's what seers are mostly used for, by mages. We track soulmarks or other items infused with Authority. That castle is humming with it." I looked up toward the tower's peak, where gothic shadows twisted against the starless sky.

"Then I'm definitely going," I said, standing slowly, pain pulling tight across my ribs.

"Thanks for confirming it." Zoe just smiled.

"Don't die, alright? Peter would kill me."

"Not planning to."

"Good," she said, spinning lazily in the air.