Chương 69: Chapter 68 - Cans of Turbulence

"Would you like a drink, sir?" The service woman's voice was a study in polite exhaustion. She stood beside his seat, a small, hovering cart of colorful refreshments beside her.

"Uuhhh..." Lucid hummed, a hand under his chin as if weighing a world-altering decision. On the small table in front of him, fourteen sealed cans of various bright colors were already arranged in a neat, slightly ridiculous pyramid.

"Lucid, as fond of you as I am becoming, I must say you are testing the boundaries of propriety," Alice's voice chimed in his mind, a mixture of amusement and divine disapproval.

"The orange one," Lucid declared finally, pointing to a can with a vibrant, sunset-colored label. The service lady whose smile had become a fixed, tolerant grimace, plucked the orange can from her cart and placed it carefully atop his pyramid, making it fifteen. She did not move. She simply stood there, the patient, suffering smile plastered on her face, waiting. Lucid stared at his collection. He had been sampling the local beverages, driven by a mix of curiosity and a desperate, homesick craving. They had soda.

Or something so close it made his heart ache. He picked up the red one, turning it in his hands. The material was a strange, lightweight metal that felt like tin foil. The label had a white, stylized icon of a bursting thin letters. It was a painful, almost mocking echo of a specific cola brand from Earth.

'This is a blatant knock-off!' he thought, a strange mix of indignation and delight bubbling inside him. He looked up at the lady, a question about the soda-cans on his mind. Above her cart, a small, flickering holographic screen displayed rotating images of the drinks. It was a crude thing, the light shimmering and unstable, but it was a screen. A hologram. It confused him.

This world had trains that flew through magical space, but their in-flight entertainment was a wobbly light show and their soda cans were wrapped in magical tinfoil. It was a weird mix of the advanced and the makeshift, like they were working with incredible magic but applying it with the aesthetic sense of a low-budget sci-fi movie.

"I think her patience is thinning, Lucid," Alice observed calmly.

"And so?" Lucid shot back mentally.

"The customer is always right." Before he could voice his next question about artificial sweeteners, she spoke. She cut him off, her voice losing its last vestige of warmth, adopting a smooth, condescending tone that could freeze fire.

"I see," she said, her eyes closed briefly as if praying for strength.

"That you are from an undeveloped continent, perhaps near the Materna frontier. I pity your lack of exposure, dear passenger." Lucid blinked behind his mist.

"You see," she continued, gesturing vaguely with a hand, "due to a faction that specializes in fate research and resonance technology, we have access to all kinds of technical devices. Vex is one of their biggest contributors, of course. But they do not typically share the... finer implementations... across the whole of the Scattered Realms." She leaned in slightly, her voice dropping to a patronizing whisper.

"For someone like you, it is possible you simply cannot comprehend the sheer magnitude of energy and artistry that went into crafting these tin preservation vessels and this holographic display. I am sure your own primitive estate will improve in time, sir." With a final, dismissive nod, she turned and pushed her cart away down the aisle, the hover mechanism emitting a faint, offended whir. Lucid sat there, utterly dumbfounded.

"She... did not hold back at all," he muttered aloud to the empty air. He wasn't embarrassed. He was frustrated. A hot, childish indignation burned in his chest.

'Primitive?!' he raged internally.

'Does she even know what a computer is? A smartphone? The internet?! We had reality television! We had... had memes!' He looked at the pyramid of cans, fifteen testaments to his own petty behavior. A small, reasonable voice in head, Alice whispered that he might have abused the refreshment service a little.

'Still,' the louder, more stubborn part of him argued, 'I paid three gold coins for this ticket. I'm getting my money's worth.' If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. He turned his gaze away from the cans, seeking solace in the view. Out the crystal-clear window, which was more like a giant, curved windshield, the void streamed past.

It was a endless sea of deep purple, streaked with waves of indigo and violet, dotted with silent, floating debris that glowed with internal light. Distant fragments of other continents hung like forgotten islands in a starry ocean.

'Is this space?' he wondered, the thought still fresh and unbelievable each time. The name "Scattered Realms" finally made perfect, literal sense. Each floating landmass was its own realm, adrift in this cosmic sea. It explained the impossible geography, the strange day-night cycles that seemed to affect entirety of the void at once.

"Huh," he breathed out. A slow, cold realization was dawning on him, one he had been avoiding since he first woke up in that purple forest. Earth was gone. Not just far away. Gone. He had died there, in a cold floor, betrayed and falling. Whether there was a theoretical path back through some cosmic rift or divine whim was a question for another day. As of now, in any practical sense, he was stranded. He had been reborn into a body of mist and mystery, in a world of floating continents and fate magic.

He didn't dwell on the sadness of it. A familiar, cold resolve took its place. He couldn't let go of his purpose. Revenge. It was a dark star he orbited. Be it crawling from hell or cutting down everyone in his path, he would have it. His goal was the only compass he had left. When it came to Alice... he felt a twinge of guilt. He would try to help her remember, to regain whatever form she had lost. But if it came down to a choice, between her restoration and his vengeance...

he knew, with a painful clarity, that he would choose his own path. After a lifetime of being used, of putting others first, it was his turn.

"You are... deep in thought again," Alice's voice gently pierced his reverie. He didn't flinch. He had grown used to her presence, even come to trust it. She could read his surface thoughts, his moods, but the deepest, darkest plans he kept shrouded, and she had learned not to pry. It was an unspoken truce.

"Thinking about Vex," he lied smoothly.

"Oh, Vex," she replied.

"From my estimations... the city is the capital. The kingdom and the continent share the name, it would seem." Lucid's own fragmented memories from Karmen's life stirred. He hadn't lived in Vex as Karmen, the Omega Rift had thrown him forward in time, but he carried ghostly impressions, half-forgotten dreams of a vast, learned city.

"It's large. They seem to value magical arts and knowledge above all else. In battle, in everything."

"How do you know?" Alice asked, curious.

"Oh, I suppose it is because of that..." she answered her own question, remembering his borrowed past. Lucid nodded, though she couldn't see it.

"They have one of the biggest armies, a real rival to Materna. Thank God they exist. Who knows what Materna would have done with unchecked power." He chuckled, but it was a dry sound.

"Not that Vex is some dainty paradise. I remember... rumors. Experiments. Cross-breeding humans and other species. It made me sick." He shook his head, the memory a foul taste.

"But that's not my concern. When we get there, we find the Fenshore House. And we steal that engine." He paused, thinking of the silent, brooding presence missing from the seat opposite him.

"There's also the matter of Ayame. I doubt she'll separate easily. I'm practically her food source now." Alice emitted a gentle, melodic sound, the mental equivalent of a snort.

'It seems your blood is uniquely... addictive.'

"Whatever," Lucid grumbled. Outside, the perpetual purple of the void seemed to deepen, taking on a darker, navy hue. Was it night? The concept was strange here, with no sun, just a distant, ambient light source that waxed and waned for the entire void at once. A profound exhaustion, held back by adrenaline and novelty, finally washed over him. The strain of the drug, the mental toll of his deception in the village, the physical cost of channeling the chains, it all settled on his shoulders like a lead cloak.

He yawned, a deep, jaw-cracking thing.

"I guess I'll just... rest my eyes for a bit." He let his head lean back against the cool red leather. The pyramid of cans blurred in his vision.

"Sleep well, my chosen," Alice whispered, her voice the softest chime. He was just drifting off when a sound pulled him back. A clatter. Then another. A metallic rolling. His eyes snapped open. The pyramid of cans was collapsing. One by one, they wobbled and tumbled from the table, hitting the carpeted floor with soft thunks and rolling away under seats. He hadn't touched them. An alarm, soft but urgent, chimed through the carriage, followed by a calm, automated voice.

"Passengers, please remain in your seats. We are entering a zone of turbulence." The train shivered. Not a violent shake, but a deep, unsettling vibration that thrummed through the floor and the leather of his seat. The gentle, colored lights along the ceiling flickered, then switched to a pulsing, dim red. Whispered murmurs of concern broke out among the other passengers. Lucid's exhaustion vanished, replaced by sharp alertness. Turbulence in the void? What did that even mean? Cosmic storms? Debris fields?

He didn't care about the science. He would have sat back and ridden it out. That would have been the case, if Ayame was with him. But she wasn't. His Oni companion, his self-declared "property," had vanished to the back of the train over an hour ago and hadn't returned. In a calm journey, it was odd. In a sudden, alarming situation, it was a screaming signal that something was wrong. Worry, sharp and cold, cut through him. Something had happened to her.

Something had changed in her back in that village, and now this. As the red alarm lights cast frantic shadows and the train gave another, stronger lurch, Lucid pushed himself up from his seat, ignoring the automated warning. He sighed, a long, weary sound that held the weight of a hundred strange days.

"I just can't seem to have a normal one," he muttered to himself, and started making his way down the shuddering aisle, leaving his scattered sodas behind, heading toward wherever Ayame had gone.