Chương 89: 88: Things

The endless chessboards and fractured mirrors, still struggling to understand where they were.

"Where... are we?" Clock followed her gaze.

"My dimension," he said.

"More accurately, the visual architecture of my consciousness. This is where Transport sends everything." She frowned.

"Transport?"

"A defensive mechanism." He spoke as though explaining something ordinary.

"When an attack would otherwise hit me, Transport intercepts it. It removes the force, the matter, the energy-then stores it here instead of letting it exist where I am. Every strike I've ever survived, every projectile, every explosion... they all pass through this place before they're discarded." Katherine looked back across the impossible landscape.

"So every attack you've ever taken..."

"Passed through my mind first." She stared at him for a long moment.

"That explains a lot." A faint smile ghosted across his lips.

"I've been told that." Clock was already moving. He released her hand - she felt the loss like a bruise - and crossed the invisible barrier to where Butter's head lay resting on a patch of chessboard that had finally stopped its endless shifting. The prosthetic leg was already in his hands, and Butter's voice poured from it in a flood of instructions, demands, and frantic life.

"... and make sure the seal is flush, Clock. I'm not going through this again. Do you know how weird it is to have your head regrown by someone who doesn't know what they're doing?"

"Stop talking," Clock said, though his voice was gentle. Kneeling beside her, he held the prosthetic in one hand and the head he'd retrieved from his dimension in the other.

"The cut severed your Gloom and rendered you human. I'm going to try growing a new body from your head so you can transfer into it. It might not work, but it's worth trying."

"Alright... take your time." Butter's head rested against the prosthetic, her pink eyes closed, white hair spilling across the black-and-white squares. The leg hummed in Clock's grip, its lights pulsing in rhythm with her voice. Still white. Still offline.

"Okay," Butter said, her voice quieter now.

"I'm ready. Just... be careful. I don't want to be a leg forever. It's very limiting. I can't kick anyone. I can't eat candy. I can't..." Fear crept into the last words.

"You'll eat candy when you're whole again."

"Promise?" Clock smiled. It was the most beautiful thing Katherine had ever seen.

"Promise." He pressed the prosthetic against the base of Butter's neck. The alloy seam hissed as the connection formed. Her voice vanished for one agonizing heartbeat before returning, clearer than before.

"That's... okay. That's good. I'm feeling something. The Gloom's responding."

"Come on," Clock muttered.

"Come on, work. Butter, you need to guide it."

"I'm trying." Strain bled into her voice.

"It's not connecting. The pathways... there's a gap. My magic's there. I can feel it, but I can't bridge it." Clock pushed harder, trying to force the connection, trying to reignite the severed current Thornburgh's claw had left behind. The light flared, died, then flickered weakly again.

"It's not working," he whispered, fear creeping into his voice.

"Butter, I can't repair the pathways from the outside."

"I'm trying!" Butter cried.

"I'm trying, Clock, but there's nothing there. It's like reaching for someone's hand in the dark and finding empty air. I can't find it. I can't find myself." Katherine moved before she realized she had. She knelt beside them, placing one hand on Butter's head and the other on the prosthetic. The Nonagon pulsed against her hip.

"Move your hands," she said. Clock looked up.

"What?"

"Move them. Let me try."

"Katherine, you don't-""I know." She met his eyes.

"I died today. Something brought me back. Maybe... maybe something in me remembers how." He searched her face for a long moment. Then he moved aside. Katherine laid both palms against Butter's forehead. Beneath her fingers, she felt the faintest rhythm - weak, uneven, like a drummer struggling to remember the beat. She closed her eyes. The Nonagon answered immediately. She didn't command it. She simply opened herself to it, letting it see what she saw. This is Butter. The thought wasn't a thought anymore.

It was a prayer. This is the girl who taught me how to laugh in a place that wanted me to cry. The girl who gave me a dress, popcorn, and a reason to keep fighting. The girl who bends reality because she refuses to break. This is my friend. Please.... Korhess couldn't tear her eyes away from the mirrors. They surrounded her, splintering light and time into countless fragments, each shard revealing something she had no right to witness.

She had already turned away from the vision of her own future - the cliff, the sunset, Clock turning toward her - but the others remained. One showed a colossal black stingray gliding through a sea of stars, its wings edged in luminous blue. Butter rode its back, white hair streaming behind her, pink eyes shining with the same radiance pulsing through the creature's fins. It wasn't flying. It was teleporting. Another shard showed Clock racing through a sky that couldn't decide whether it belonged to dawn or dusk.

His body was nothing but a streak of white and violet, moving faster than light, faster than thought itself, the air around him burning and freezing in the same impossible instant. Korhess frowned. Then the thought struck her. Why were they walking? She turned from the mirrors and looked toward the real Clock, kneeling beside Butter, violet light flaring uselessly between his hands. Why were they running?

Years of strategy, years of finding flaws in battle plans, years of seeing where fear made people forget the obvious - suddenly every crack widened into a canyon. Clock could have flown them out. He could have annihilated this entire facility the moment he'd recovered Butter's head. He had carried them all into his dimension with a thought. Folded space like paper. There was no reason to fear this faction. No reason to flee. Their plan twisted back on itself, repeating like a broken melody.

The realization was so simple she almost laughed. He could have reached the perimeter in less than a heartbeat, carrying Butter's head, the prosthetic, Katherine, and the impossible artifact. But he hadn't. They had walked. They had run. They had fought. They had forgotten. Why? Butter had summoned a stingray capable of teleporting through the void. Korhess had seen it herself in the mirrors - Float, Butter called it. A creature that crossed worlds the way fish crossed water.

Even trapped inside a prosthetic, Clock could have summoned it for her. He could have reached into the space between thoughts for that miraculous book Butter had used against Korhess, just as easily as he reached for his private dimension, and pulled it free. But they hadn't. They had forgotten. Her eyes widened. The pods.... Korhess's stomach turned to ice. When she had fought Butter in the chamber of pods, the girl had been protecting something. The pods. The harvest.

The dreamers whose minds had been stripped away, their Apis refined into fuel. That was why Butter had come to this facility. Why had she released Katherine? Why had she forgotten the pods? Now they were planning to awaken a galaxy-level abomination and flee. They had forgotten the pods. Forgotten the people. Forgotten why they had come. The Nonagon. The word settled into place like a key turning inside a lock. It wasn't merely power. It orchestrated. It nudged. It redirected.

It made them forget the important things and cling to the urgent ones. It kept them trapped inside this facility, inside this battle, chasing problems that served its purpose instead of theirs. Korhess didn't know whether it dulled the mind, manipulated fate, or simply allowed them to make catastrophic decisions while quietly guiding them toward them. She didn't know what it wanted or why it had chosen Katherine.

But she knew - with a certainty that settled into her bones like winter frost - nothing would go right until they confronted it. Her gaze shifted to Katherine. The girl knelt beside Butter, both hands resting on her friend's forehead, blue hair plastered against sweat-slick skin. The Nonagon pulsed inside the satchel at her hip, and the faint cobalt tracery winding across her arms had already climbed her neck, jaw, and temples. She was becoming too volatile. Too entwined with the thing remaking her.

If Korhess spoke her suspicions aloud, Katherine would never believe them. She couldn't. The Nonagon had become part of her body - woven into her spine, her organs, her very identity. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Asking her to surrender it would be like asking her to rip out her own heart.... Korhess looked at Clock instead. His eyes were wide open.

His hands remained pressed against Butter's leg, pouring Gloom into the broken pathways, but his thoughts had drifted elsewhere. She saw it in the rigid line of his shoulders, the tension gathering beneath his calm. He had heard everything. He didn't dare look at her. If Katherine noticed, she would ask questions, and if she asked... I don't know what to do. His voice entered her mind quietly, stripped of pride. I'm out of ideas. It might be affecting me too.

Every time I try to think my way out, it's like looking through fog. I know there's something there, but I can't reach it. Stop, Korhess answered. Stop trying to see. The fog is the point. It wants you confused. It wants you afraid. It wants you fighting the wrong battle. Then what do I do? She felt the desperation beneath the question. It was painfully familiar. You breathe, she told him. You stop trying to win. You start trying to survive. She stepped closer, her hooves silent against the impossible chessboard.

Katherine grunted beside Butter, forcing waves of cobalt energy into her friend while the Nonagon pulsed with every heartbeat. She couldn't hear them. She was too focused, too consumed by the thing reshaping her. I have a resistance, Korhess thought, surprising herself with the certainty. Years of consuming Apis. My mind is... less easily shaped. Less human? Clock's thought carried the faintest trace of exhausted humour. Less malleable, she corrected. The Nonagon cannot make me forget what I already know.

It cannot blind me to the cracks. It cannot make me stop running. A faint warmth brushed the edge of his thoughts. Then neither will I. Katherine's voice cut through their silent exchange.

"I need more light. Clock, your Gloom. Can you-" He raised a hand. Violet light bloomed around his fingers, flowing into Butter as Katherine's cobalt energy met it. The two powers spiralled together, separating and merging again in impossible patterns that made the mirrors shimmer. It was exactly what the Nonagon wanted. We'll find another way, Korhess thought. We will, Clock answered. There was something new beneath the words. Something buried so deeply it had almost forgotten its own name.

Korhess turned back toward Butter. A deep hum began inside the girl's skull. The Nonagon did not answer. It never answered. Instead, something inside Katherine opened. The cobalt dream-stuff that had replaced her organs flowed through her arms and into Butter. It wasn't healing. It was reminding. Reminding Butter's cells what they had once been. Reminding her Gloom how it had once flowed. Reminding her body, piece by piece, how to become whole again. The hum spread outward. A collarbone. A ribcage. A chest.

Clock reacted instantly, conjuring a blanket and draping it over the forming body before the process continued. A torso. A waist. Hips. Legs. Arms. It sounded like an ancient machine remembering how to wake. Butter's leg locked onto the new body with a sharp metallic click. Her eyes flew open. — The surge of Gloom exploded outward. Yellow. Blue. Red. The colours spiralled together before bursting apart again, patterns too intricate for the mind to follow. The shockwave hurled Katherine backwards.

She landed hard on the shifting chessboard, vision filled with nothing but blinding light. Then Butter sat upright, clutching the blanket around herself like an oversized towel. She laughed. Her pink eyes blazed. White hair tumbled wildly around her face as she stared down at her own hands.

"Oh my..." she gasped between helpless bursts of laughter.

"Oh my, I have hands. I have a head. I have-" She launched herself at Clock. He caught her instinctively, stumbling back as his arms wrapped around her. For a moment, they were simply siblings holding one another inside a place that had never known warmth. Butter laughed and sobbed into his shoulder, fists tangled in his shirt, both legs wrapped tightly around his waist.

"You idiot," she cried.

"You absolute idiot. I love you. I love you."

"I know," Clock whispered, his own voice breaking.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You're an idiot."

"The biggest idiot."

"The worst idiot."

"I'm the idiot king of idiots."

"You are." She leaned back just enough to grin at him - the same grin Katherine remembered, the one that declared I'm here, and I'm not leaving.

"I missed you. I was only a leg for three hours, but I missed you so much it hurt." Clock laughed through damp eyes.

"I missed you too." Within seconds, Butter had conjured herself a fresh pair of cargo pants. No shoes. No shirt. Melody appeared again, and endless white bandages wrapped around her torso and arms, stopping just beneath her neck, looking like a fashionable new trend. Katherine stared, admiring the way they clung to her body like a second skin. Soft pink pulses flowed beneath the fabric like a heartbeat.

Butter launched herself from Clock's shoulders, landed in a perfect somersault, and burst across the chessboard laughing. She backflipped, frontflipped, cartwheeled into a handspring that somehow became another flip Katherine was fairly certain violated several laws of physics.

"I'M BACK!" Her voice echoed through the fractured mirrors.

"I'M BACK, YOU ABSOLUTE—" She stopped mid-stride, squinting at a shard that reflected her riding an enormous black stingray through a sea of stars.

"…Wait. Is that Float? I summoned Float? When did I—" She blinked, shook her head, and immediately flipped again before landing effortlessly on her feet. The prosthetic's lights were still white. It hadn't completely released her Gloom yet. That was a problem for later.

"Okay! Okay, we're good. We're whole." She looked at Katherine. Her grin softened.

"Honeycakes... you did that." Katherine still sat on the chessboard, her hands tingling with the lingering pulse of the Nonagon.

"I just... reminded you. You did the rest." Butter crossed the distance in two strides and pulled Katherine into a crushing hug.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice small, fierce, and utterly sincere.

"Thank you, Honeycakes. Thank you for not letting me stay broken." Katherine hugged her back, burying her face against Butter's shoulder. She smelled like marshmallows and a bakery fresh from the oven.

"You're not allowed to die, Sugarbear," she whispered.

"You're not allowed to leave me alone in this place."

"I'm not going anywhere." Butter leaned back, smiling through damp eyes.

"We're getting out of here. All of us." Her gaze shifted to Clock, then to Korhess.

"All of us," she repeated.

"Even the pretty deer lady." Katherine followed her gaze. Korhess hadn't moved. She still stood near the mirrors, hands resting lightly against her chest, velvet antlers catching fractured light. Her eyes remained fixed on a single shard. One frayed around the edges, soft enough to change. A cliff beneath a setting sun. Clock standing beside her. Turning toward her. Their faces drifting closer. Korhess's heartbeat stumbled.

Katherine was only a few metres behind her, still unconsciously holding Clock's hand like it was the one thing anchoring her to reality. She could never see this. Korhess immediately turned away. Her hooves carried her from the mirror before she could look again. She stumbled once, caught herself, and kept walking.

"Silly me," she murmured. The words were barely audible. Katherine's eyes narrowed. She watched Korhess carefully now. The trembling hands. The uneven breathing. The way she'd practically fled from the mirror. Something had frightened her. Katherine let it go. There were more important things. She turned back to Butter.

"Let me see." Her hands were already reaching toward Butter's neck, carefully checking the freshly healed seam where head met body.

"Does it hurt? Can you feel everything? Are your powers—""My powers are fine." There was something strange in Butter's voice. Something that sounded almost... Knowing.

"Better than fine." Her gaze settled on Katherine's arms. The cobalt tracery had spread farther while Katherine wasn't looking. Thin glowing veins climbed from her wrists toward her elbows.

"I can see what's happening to you." Instinctively, Katherine hid her hands behind her back.

"It's nothing. The Nonagon's just helping. It's making me stronger." Butter looked at her for a long moment.

"It's making you something." Her voice stayed gentle.

"I don't know what yet." She looked toward Clock.

"But we'll figure it out."

"Together." Clock nodded without hesitation. His violet eyes rested on Katherine with quiet concern.

"Together." Katherine wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe the Nonagon was just a tool. Something she could put down once this was over. She felt it now threaded through the impossible structures replacing her spine, woven into muscles that hadn't existed yesterday, spreading beneath her skin like roots searching for deeper soil. It wasn't power anymore. It was becoming. Her eyes drifted back to Korhess.

The deer-woman stood with her back to the mirrors, breathing slowly, deliberately, like someone trying very hard not to think about what she'd just seen. What did you see? Katherine wondered. What made you run? She didn't ask. Some answers changed people.... Clock finally broke the silence.

"We need a plan." Everyone turned toward him. His Gloom had settled around him once more like a cloak, the strategist slowly returning beneath the brother.

"The Hexagon is in the Commander's chamber. The Talon's being armed. The abominations are waking." He looked at Katherine.

"What do we have?" Katherine closed her eyes. The fortress unfolded behind them in cobalt lines. She found Thornburgh immediately. His signal burned weakly in the west wing. The Talon glowed inside the hangar, the Hexagon already being installed into its core. The lower levels pulsed with stirring horrors. Something else waited far below. No signal. Just... Waiting.

"The galaxy thing," Katherine whispered.

"It's still asleep." Her eyes opened.

"But it won't be for long." Korhess answered without hesitation.

"Then must we rouse it." Silence settled over the room. She stood straighter now, her antlers catching the fractured light like the boughs of an ancient oak.

"The Commander shall ne'er suffer us to depart. The Talon shall hunt us, and the abominations shall rend us limb from limb." Her gaze swept across them as though counting every tree before a gathering storm.

"But should the galaxy thing awaken ere it hath reached its season... this ceaseth to be a hunt." Her voice hardened, steady as roots sunk deep into old earth."'Twill become a war." She folded her hands before her.

"And where the hunter seeketh but a single hart, war layeth low the whole forest. Mighty oaks fall beside tender saplings, and within the broken grove, new paths are born where none did stand before." Butter blinked.

"So... your plan is to wake the thing that could kill every single one of us?" Korhess inclined her head.

"I would place before the Commander a terror far greater than ourselves." Her tone never wavered.

"The fruit upon this bough hath not yet ripened. Its roots grow shallow, its trunk remaineth unsteady. Should it awaken now, it shall devour this place ere it learneth to master its own hunger. The Commander knoweth this well." Katherine watched the map shift behind her eyes. Security routes. Containment protocols. Emergency responses. Everything collapsed around a single point. It wasn't a good plan. It was barely even a plan. It was a chance.

"If we do this," Katherine said slowly, "the moment it wakes, we run. No fighting. No looking back." Clock nodded.

"I can carry everyone." He gestured around his impossible dimension.

"I can shelter us here while the facility tears itself apart."

"And afterwards... I can take us anywhere." Butter's grin returned. The dangerous grin. The one Katherine knew meant chaos was about to happen.

"So we wake the monster... let it eat the bad guys... then ride Float out while everything explodes?" She looked between them.

"That's the plan?" Clock sighed.

"That's the plan." Butter laughed.

"Terrible plan."

"The worst plan."

"I love it." She lightly punched his shoulder.

"Let's go." Her attention shifted to Korhess.

"You coming, deer?" Korhess met her gaze. She looked upon the girl who had sundered forty years of conditioning. The girl who had coaxed barren branches into bloom once more. The girl who had, without knowing, reminded an old doe that even the oldest trees may yet long for spring.

"Aye." The faintest smile touched her lips.

"Whithersoever this little grove doth wander... there too shall I." Butter's grin widened.

"Good." She cracked her knuckles.

"Let's go wake a monster."...

"Wait." Butter had already started toward the edge of Clock's dimension before she looked back.

"What?" Melody tightened across her body, the white bandages hugging her frame as she jogged back to Katherine. Katherine caught her hand and gently tugged her toward the corner of the chessboard, where a lone pawn and the fractured mirrors shielded them from the others. Butter smiled.

"What's wrong, Honeycakes?" Katherine didn't answer. She stepped close until they were nearly chest to chest, slid her arms around Butter's neck, and looked up at her.

"I didn't get one last time." Butter blinked.

"A... what?"

"A kiss." A faint pink crept across Butter's cheeks.

"I mean... I was going to—" Then kiss her. Clock's voice slipped cleanly into her thoughts. And do it well... for all our sakes. Butter didn't question it. She already wanted to. She lowered her head. Katherine rose onto her toes to meet her halfway. Their foreheads rested together for a heartbeat before their lips met. The kiss was slow. Gentle. Katherine sighed softly into it and instinctively curled closer, her fingers threading into Butter's bandaged hairline while Butter's arms settled around her waist.

The world beyond their little corner quietly disappeared. They remained there for what felt like five uninterrupted minutes, each time the kiss threatened to end, Katherine leaned up for another, smiling between breaths as though making up for lost time. When they finally separated, Katherine didn't move away. Instead, she buried her face against Butter's shoulder and wrapped her arms around her again.

"None of us gets to die." Butter rested her cheek lightly atop Katherine's head.

"We won't."

"I'm serious, Sugarbear."

"So am I." Katherine squeezed her tighter.

"I want a family." Butter smiled.

"Oh my."

"I want a wedding."

"Sounds perfect."

"And two adopted kids who drive us completely insane." Butter laughed.

"I am surprisingly okay with all of that."

"No backing out." Butter shook her head.

"Never." Katherine smiled, stole one last quick kiss, then reluctantly slipped her hand into Butter's. Together, they walked back toward the others. Only when they reached Clock did Butter finally let go and step to his side. She moved toward the edge of the invisible barrier, where Clock's impossible dimension folded into itself, ready to cast them back into the fortress waiting to burn.

He stood beside her, Gloom already gathering around him, violet light catching in his white hair until he looked like something from one of Katherine's childhood storybooks. Katherine watched them. The brother and sister. The god and the catastrophe. The two people who had taught her that surviving wasn't the same as living. — Korhess stepped to Katherine's side. Her hooves made no sound upon the invisible floor.

Velvet antlers caught the fractured light spilling from the mirrors, while her mismatched eyes lingered upon the two figures below.

"She is a marvel," Korhess said softly.

"Thy companion - the one who breaketh all things that they might remember what once they were." Katherine kept her gaze forward. She couldn't look at Korhess. Not yet. If she did, she would see the mirror Korhess had fled from. She would ask why. And she wasn't ready to hear the answer.

"Yes," she replied quietly.

"She is." Silence settled between them. Below, the chessboards shifted without hands to guide them. The mirrors continued reflecting their impossible truths. And somewhere beyond the edge of Clock's hidden world, a future not yet written waited with patient certainty.

"We shall speak," Korhess said at last, her voice gentler than Katherine had ever heard it.

"Of what thou didst witness. Of what I beheld. Of the strange workings that have laid claim to us without our consent." She lowered her eyes.

"But not whilst the hunt still breatheth."

"Now... we fight." Katherine nodded.

"Now we fight." Clock lifted a hand. The hidden realm began folding into itself. Chessboards dissolved into drifting fragments of light. Mirrors splintered into glittering dust. The frozen stillness between heartbeats collapsed, giving way once more to the warm, dangerous pulse of the fortress.

"One matter more," Korhess murmured. Her words were meant only for Katherine.

"The Nonagon is no mere font of strength, nor servant awaiting command. It laboreth toward some unseen purpose." She hesitated, studying Katherine with quiet intensity.

"And I fear... thou art not the thing it seeketh to create." Katherine finally turned to meet her gaze.

"What is it making?" A faint smile touched Korhess's lips.

"I know not." Her eyes drifted briefly to the satchel glowing at Katherine's side.

"But I would fain live long enough to behold its answer." The last of the dimension folded away. Light swallowed them. When it faded, they stood once more in the corridor beyond the Commander's chamber. The battle had already begun.