DAY 10

Suisei's spirit stood before me, fully uploaded, however, before I could get even a single word in edgewise, he stuck out his palm in a stopping gesture, looked me in the eyes, and said, "Don't open my memories all at once."

It didn't take a mind-reader to know that that was what I was going to do. The man had so many secrets, and now that his spirit was totally under my power, I could do whatever I wanted with him. No more hoodwinking. No more getting dragged along for the ride. For once, I was in the driver's seat.

Fortunately, I was a benevolent deity, if not an entirely competent one.

I crossed my arms. "Give me one good reason why."

"For one, you'll freak out," he said. "For another, it would be better if I told you my story at my pace. A puzzle is more than just a collection of pieces, after all." He exhaled. "If you drown yourself in my memories all at once, I fear you'll miss the forest for the trees."

I noticed that his speech was slightly less formal than what I was used to. Maybe that was because I was now hearing his thoughts directly, rather than the highly polished Trenton he'd spoken in life.

"What makes you so sure I will?" I asked.

He raised an eyebrow. "What makes you so certain you won't?"

Fudge, he was good.

I nodded. "Alright." Moving around him, I slithered out through the entryway and onto Garden Court Drive. He followed behind me.

"Even going into the mind-uploading process knowing as much about it as I did," he said, "that didn't prepare me in the least for experiencing the real thing, myself." Suisei stared at his limbs, and then looked up at me. "Quickly, we ought to enter one of your mind-worlds." He gave the wyrms lurking among the ruined Garden Court wary looks. "I don't want to get the others involved. Not yet."

I nodded. "I understand."

Closing my eyes, I brought up my Main Menu and my human form along with it. The next moment, the two of us had appeared beneath the ever-revolving cluster of soul crystals. Suisei looked up at it in wonder.

"So… this is what Greg created?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Marvelous."

He walked off and started to look around.

"So… how are we going to do this?" I asked. "Do you mind me asking questions? Including that one," I added.

Suisei bowed his head. "Consider me an open book, though make sure you read me in order."

"Tell me about the Sword, then," I said. "From what you said before I absorbed you, I surmised that you either had the Sword in your possession, or knew its whereabouts."

Suisei raised his finger at me. "You're skipping to the end of the tale; that's cheating."

"Why?"

"Because it changes everything."

I crossed my arms again. "And, let me guess, you're worried about how I'll react?"

"Quite."

"Well," I said, "it's not like I have any shortage of questions for you. I suppose we could start with the others first."

"Good. I've prepared the tale in detail. I only have a few questions before we begin."

"Yes?" I asked.

Suisei looked left and right, and then furrowed his brow in frustration. "First: where is Andalon?"

"She's currently AWOL."

Suisei gasped. His lips pursed as his gaze hardened. "What? She's missing?"

"A lot happened while you were away," I said. "Like, a lot a lot. Didn't you see that the Hall of Echoes was in ruins?"

He nodded. "That's my second question: what happened while I was out of commission?"

I conjured up a table and chairs with a wave of my hand, along with a kitchen area replete with food.

Dr. Horosha chuckled. "I have a feeling this is going to be a wild ride," he said.

"The feeling's mutual," I said. "Now, come, sit down, there's a lot to cover."

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

— — —

I picked up the story pretty much right where Suisei had left it. Not only did I do a show and tell for the events he'd missed, I also took the liberty of filling Suisei in on some key details I hadn't yet mentioned to him, principally Nina and her powers.

Speaking of which…

"Do you have any explanation for Nina's powers that I should know of?" I asked.

But he just stuck the tip of his thumb in his mouth, bit down softly, and shook his head and muttered: "I have no idea."

Knowing that Suisei was devout, I both wondered and worried what his reaction would be to the news that there was more than one Angel.

He managed to totally surprise me: he just nodded and said, "I know."

"Did you also know that they're engaged in an all-out war over Paradise, and that, perhaps, that the fungus is one of them?" I said.

He shook his head. "No, but that wouldn't surprise me in the least."

I cleared my throat. "Well… anyway, Andalon made it very clear that there are many Angels, not just the ones involved with our worlds' versions of Lassedicy. Right now, my best theory is that the fungus has invaded Paradise, perhaps even conquered it."

Suisei was aghast at that. "Why would you say that?"

"At first it was the hummingbirds," I said, "well, the hummingbird-people, but then Kléothag came along and removed all my doubts."

We both made the Bond-sign at the mention of the Hallowed Beast's name.

"The Hallowed Beast spoke of a great battle that He and his allies waged against something called Mwill," I said. "He mentioned multiple names: the Forgemaster, and the Spears that it made; Xuyux, the 'Lord of Symmetries', whatever that means; something—a group, or a faction—called the 'Kyu-Neen'; Godspawn; the urubi—Kléothag's servants, or retainers. His memories told me of the Iklakanza, some kind of empire, something called the Golden Colossus, and another something called the Fifth Wind. He also mentioned a battle: Endenen Unadyne; the Battle of the Barrier, he called it."

Suisei stared at me, transfixed. "Where the hell do we even start with things like that?" he said, barely above a whisper. "They go beyond us, perhaps even beyond Andalon. And here I was, thinking my life was strange."

"If I had to guess," I explained, "the Battle of the Barrier was the war over Paradise. I'd like to think that some of the entities Kléothag mentioned were other Angels, in which case, that would make the Mwill the faction of the 'evil' Angels, so… the fungus might be a Mwill."

"Did you learn anything else?" he asked.

I shook my head. "No, then the fungus attacked, or, rather, the darkness behind the fungus attacked. It was terrifying."

"Well," Suisei said, "that's better than nothing."

I couldn't agree more.

As the tale went on, I learned that Suisei was particularly interested in Mr. Himichi's concerns about causality and who knew what when, and how.

What was the relationship between Cat's wyrms, Andalon's, and the Norms?

Did Lassedile scripture foretell of Andalon's wyrms, or of the fungus and its corruption?

They were heavy questions, to be sure.

"My theory, at any rate," I said, "is that Andalon is one of the other Angels, though it might be more accurate to say that she's only a piece of one. &alon—her greater self—is the actual Angel in question. In fact, I'm willing to bet that she's the Moonlight Queen. Also, this is where I can actually give you some good news for once!"

"Really?" Suisei said, clearly doubting me.

Nodding, I let my arms come to rest on the tabletop. "I'm now far enough along in my transformation that the greater whole has taken notice of me. Andalon disappeared because she's finally linking up with her greater self for good. She'll be arriving soon, and will take the wyrms and any other survivors away to safety."

"And she will do that… how, exactly?" Suisei asked.

"She's going to bring us into or take us to something she calls the Place That Moves."

"Which is?" he asked.

"I don't know, but at this point, all that matters to me was her assertion that it was capable of moving among the stars."

"Do you believe her?"

I nodded. "With all my heart."

Suisei pursed his lips. "I thought you struggled with your faith, Genneth."

"Yes, I did—and, to a certain extent, I still do."

"What changed?"

"Other than me and everyone and everything else?" I asked. I sighed. "Really, it was Andalon herself that made the difference. The problem wasn't my faith, but that I hadn't found a God worth believing in, but then Andalon entered my life. She's not the God I wanted, for sure, but she's the one I needed, by which I mean she was the only one who ever showed up."

"And you have confidence in this leap of faith?" he asked.

"Yes," I said. "And what about you?"

"From the moment I arrived on your world, I've strived to approach matters as scientifically as I could, just as I've always done."

"I tried to do that" I said, "but look how far that got me." I sighed. "But, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying cold, hard material logic isn't important. Rather, it's limited. At the end of the day, what's happening to our world is supernatural. By definition, that means it's not the sort of thing that we can dissect and analyze until we've discovered all of its secrets. It is what it is."

Suisei straightened his posture in his chair. "Respectfully, I disagree."

"What?" I said. "How? Why?"

"Genneth," he smiled kindly, "from what I know, pataphysics is much, much more than the ability to push and pull objects at a distance. Physics and pataphysics are two sides of the same coin. Both of them undergird reality; they govern everything from the wyrm transformations to the very fact of our conscious minds."

Whoa…

I leaned back in surprise. "What?"

Suisei nodded. "Supernatural is just a matter of perspective and choices. As I told you before, in my world, nearly everyone had pataphysical abilities to one degree or another, in a combination of natural talent and learned skill. Your world would have called it magic. But it isn't; it's no more 'magical' than magnetic levitation or the photoelectric effect, and we studied accordingly. By my world's standards, I'm something of an expert on it. Even as a kid, I always had a knack for pataphysics."

Though it came in on tip-toe—the man was hardly one to toot his own horn—there was no mistaking the pride Suisei felt toward his accomplishments.

Memories bloomed like flowers. Pictures and moments intruded on the scene, flashing around us like glimpses of the silver screen.

I saw a blank piece of paper held between Suisei's little hands. Hunkering down with his thoughts, he conjured a ghostly heat right at the edge of bursting into flame and dragged it across the page in delicate motions; a swipe here, a scratch, a jiggle. Bit by bit, he charred a crude but very spirited drawing the city streets outside the classroom.

In another, I watched humidity and sweat coalesce and freeze into spikes of ice on the bamboo shinai during kendo practice on a hot summer's day after his high school classes let out. He melted the ice just as quickly, sending jolts of electricity through it that shocked his opponent with an ionic bite.

In a third, I felt the grown man's thrill as he leapt a story high in a single bound, power coursing through his legs.

"That's… incredible," I said.

"Yes. But it's also quite literally child's play." He smiled. "Anything can be studied, Genneth, provided you have the right tools. Belief doesn't make or break laws; observation does. I devoted as much of my time as I could to study the pataphysical underpinnings of Green Death and the wyrms, and as I said, I tried to be scientific about it."

"And… what did you learn from your studies?" I asked.

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