BabaVader
patreon
Chapter 320 Time and Apples
🕑 Added 2023-09-18 18:20:31 +0000 UTCAuthor's note:
And here it is! I almost forgot how much babble is in this chapter... Anyway, the next part of the story will mostly follow Catori and the meeting between pretty-much-everyone-important. There will be some Fio chapters in between. We'll see how the balance turns out.
Anyway, enjoy the chapter!
Cheers!
-----
Catori slowly raised her hands. One by one, the tips of her fingers met, starting with her pinkies. Then she pressed her knuckles together just before her palms met. She closed the gaps between her fingers and opened her hands like pages of a book. There was a smile on her face and she clapped twice.
Someone knocked on the door.
Catori yelped and jumped to her feet from the bed before calming down and calling out.
“Come in.”
The door opened to reveal Protector Banélin, the husband. He and his wife were Nymph’s… well, protectors, and mouthpieces. They organized anything the mantis needed or the dwarves needed from her. After Catori’s evolution, they had helped her out by letting her live in the guardhouse leading into the Comraich, the holy centre of any dwarven city occupied by a Guardian.
“Madam Catori. There are guests for you.”
“Eh? Who is it?”
“Madam Alex the [Living Fortress] along with two humans, one of them a child, I believe.”
“Ah, great! They’re my friends. I’ll go see them.”
“Of course. I showed them to the sitting room on the second floor.”
“Thanks, Banélin.”
“Anything for the Guardian’s friend.”
The dwarf retreated, the tips of his fluffy ears peeking out from their ornate silver covering. Catori slid a hand over her shirt, flattening it a little. It’s back was open to leave room for her wings which were currently small and feathered in the colours of Fio. Keeping them at that size made moving inside much easier but putting them away entirely quickly got annoying. She was wearing simple leather pants and no shoes. No matter the size of her wings, she could always float or even fly, and leaving her toes free to breathe fresh air was super comfy. Maybe winter would change that opinion…
Catori made down the stairs and quickly found the sitting room. She had to be careful with her head. Even at her short 158 centimetres height, the doorways often left less than a hand width of room. The staircase was even worse.
Inside the room, she found her friends. Alex, or Alexandra, the Living Fortress with her purple tone of pure thaumium, her eyes glowing gold. Hera, the self-appointed personal maid of Alex, a normal human. And Circe, the [Witch] that was still a child at just over 12 years old with her Raven familiar Mex sitting on her shoulder. The three were sitting at a table slightly too small for them with Alex standing up as Catori closed the door.
“Um…” Circe said, her face filled with confusion.
“Hey, everyone. Long time no see!” Catori grinned.
“Are you… Catori?” Alex asked.
“Yup!”
“Oh, wow. Congratulations on the evolution. What about Fio?”
“Huh? Weren’t you the same? I mean, sharing a body and all?” Circe was still confused.
“Yes. We used a Skill to let me pilot a different body which I pushed to the point of evolving. Fio is out West by the Great Tree, researching taint and how to clean it up.”
“I see”, Hera nodded, “You are here to help with the organization in the meantime.”
“Sort of, yeah. Though I’m not doing much. The dwarves are pretty good at their job.”
“That they are.”
Alex rounded the table and put a hand on Catori’s shoulder. Their eyes met for a moment before the Living Fortress smiled gently.
“You look great, Catori. I’m happy for you.”
Catori smiled and fell forward to hug her friend.
“Me too. I can finally do this”, she said.
For a few minutes, they just shared their company, until Circe got restless and interrupted them.
“Hey, so what’s going to happen?”
Everyone sat back down at Catori’s push.
“Right. First of all, the human delegation came here with you? Or are they coming later?”
“A first group is with us. Some knights and two thaumaturges along with a priest. They’ve got a place in the outer ring where they’re staying. I think the dwarves don’t fully trust them.”
“Wouldn’t surprise me. When is the rest arriving?”
“In two weeks to a month. Depends how much they needed to prepare for the journey.”
“Okay. That’s fine. We’ve got the dwarven representatives coming in over the next two weeks or so. I know of two Guardians who decided to join the meeting. We’re going to go over a few basics of the situation before travelling to the goblin village with the hungry node to do active research with everyone who’s interested. Until the meeting starts, I guess we have time to do whatever we want.”
“Sounds good”, Alex nodded.
“So we can explore the city?” Circe asked with a grin.
“Sure. I’ll introduce you to Nymph first, I think. With me vouching for you, they’ll trust you. But… um… I want to speak to Alex with just the two of us, if that’s okay? You can wait downstairs.”
Circe blinked before shrugging and standing up. Hera sat still, looking at her mistress. Alex met my eyes before turning back to the maid and giving her a nod. The woman stood up and gave us privacy.
“Okay, what’s this about?” Alex’s voice was a little harder than it might need to be.
“No worries. I just wanted to ask some questions related to something Fio found. You see, there’s a huge tainted continent to the southwest, separated by a gap. It’s not a threat at the moment. In there, we got our claws on a book written in English of all things.”
“Another person from Earth?” Alex asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes. James, or Jamie. A similar situation to yours, put into an advanced golem’s body. This one was made by a perverted idiot who wanted a living sex toy.”
Alex grimaced.
“The thaumaturge died right after Jamie woke up. We know the book, Jamie’s diary, is at least several centuries old, probably millennia. Fio is still reading the latter bits but well… it was a bit boring?”
Alex chuckled as Catori shrugged.
“The way it’s worded hints at Jamie having lived before the system was a thing which is over eight millennia ago. But they came from Earth in modern times. They knew about anime, and cars, and America.”
“Huh. That’s interesting.”
“Right. What I wanted to ask is if you remember the year you died on Earth.”
Alex blinked. For a moment she was silent.
“Do you?” she asked.
Catori nodded.
“I died in 2015,” the feathered girl said.
“Oh. Well, I died in 2022.”
“Really? Oh, wow. That… has some interesting implications.”
“Like how time isn’t linear between Earth and this world?”
“I, no, we, Fio and I, are thinking it’s more a property of the Empty. It doesn’t actually have time. I mean, it should have, but it doesn’t.”
“Why should it have time?”
“Because when we’re in our soul, we’re in the Empty, right? And we can talk to Truth through there. And Truth could talk to us in this world if we use the correct ritual. So it’s definitely linked to this reality, which has time.”
Alex nodded and leaned back. For a moment she just thought quietly. Catori tried to put her thoughts into better words for a bit but couldn’t find any. Then, the Living Fortress leaned back forward.
“Right. I remember some weird ideas about time. Some kind of pop-science, to be fair, but… It’s all I have. The gist of it, is that time is a result of space. Only when you have space that can change, time actually exists, and only when the space actually changes. Makes sense?”
Catori pulled a face.
“Okay, think of it like this. You have an apple that’s hanging on a tree. The tree is dead, but the apple is still there. It’s not growing, or shrinking, or anything. Unless something external influences it, like wind, the apple doesn’t change. Even if you watch it for hours, the apple will be the same at the end as it was at the beginning. Until the wind blows and the apple drops on Newton's head, time is practically standing still for it.”
“I… can sort of see it? If you disregard any biological processes in the dead tree and the apple and just watch it like a dumb ape that doesn’t know anything about that, you could think it will stay like that forever.”
“Exactly. In the same way, time doesn’t exist in the Empty because there’s no space. With the apple, you still have the seeds inside reacting with the juices. You have bacteria and insects in the dead tree weakening the wood. Eventually, the apple will drop on its own, or rot on the branch, without any outside influence. That’s because there’s space for those things to happen.”
“But things happen in the Empty. Truth is there. Souls are there. I mean, Fio and I flew through it when we were reborn in this world.”
“Yeah. Maybe time and space only exist there when a soul is active inside it? As soon as it stops…”
“Because it has a living body to pilot?”
“Yeah, for example. When it stops, there’s nothing left in the Empty taking up space so time can’t happen to anything in there.”
“But… Oh, wow. This is confusing. I mean, you still have vis in there. Or rather, flux being turned into vis.”
“Well… What if all that happens in souls?”
Catori grumbled.
“You’re saying souls aren’t actually in the empty.”
“I mean, how would we have bodies if we weren’t in reality? If we weren’t real?”
“Fair. But souls are a link between Empty and reality, as far as we understand. And what about Truth, who doesn’t have a body in reality?”
“That… I don’t know. This is all just a theory based on something I vaguely remember from reading pop-science articles online. It’s not all that detailed. I might be completely wrong. Fact is, people who are reborn in this world can be from different times or arrive at different times. Right?”
“Yeah. Well, it doesn’t matter much. I’m sure we can solve our problems without unravelling the nature of space-time and the Empty.”
Alex grinned.
“Probably. And once we’re sure this world will survive, we have all the time in the world to look into such things.”
“That we do”, Catori smiled, “Let’s go downstairs. I’m sure Circe is getting impatient.”
“Yes, let’s. It’ll be nice to meet Nymph again.”
