Machina Arcanis: Two Worlds Collided-Interlude Arc Comm

Interlude Arc Comm

If only I could return to my people.

If only I hadn’t been spirited away by this enigmatic god to a rural backwater in Norwin, all in the desperate hope of finding the Champion of Gaia. The hourglass of the Sixth Apocalypse was running out, and finding Nohrell Voss Fenrith was our only hope. Without her, we had little chance of rectification.

Please forgive me, Ryusei. And my dearest daughter, Aurelia.

Marionette gently closed her journal, swinging the binding rope taut. She tucked the leather-bound tome underneath the hidden pouch of her pteruges.

It had been months of travelling from Saltnes to Stavlund with nothing to her name. However, the locals' misery had become her fortune. An apex predator, an invasive hellmoose, had been stalking the forest. To an extent, she had become something of a huntress for hire.

These towns were so remote that there wasn't a single mage within a radius of hundreds of kilometres. Arc smiths didn’t roam these paths, as no non-arcanist could use arc weapons or tools, let alone afford them. She doubted they even had the money to buy a pair of travel arc boots.

The people here weren’t poor, exactly, but they weren’t rich in monetary terms. Wealth was defined differently in these parts.

Marionette sat in her small room inside an unnamed inn — they didn’t need a name, given it was the only inn around. The room held a simple bunkbed; hers was the bottom, while the almighty Apollo took the top.

The mattress was itchy, a far cry from her comfy bed at Solis Aeternum’s palace. Still, sleeping inside tents or out under the starry night as she had on Nate-etan Island wasn’t an option here. It was simply too cold to be practical.

Nervous and attempting to be as quiet as possible, she glanced at the sleeping god. Apollo loved to sleep more than anything. He was the worst kind of person: a lazy one.

She kept that thought to herself, of course.

A dim bulb cast an amber glow across her face. Her auburn hair had become filthy and greasy, resembling a terrible bird’s nest from lack of care. There were products she could have purchased, but she needed to save every coin for something much more important.

"This should be enough," she mused, calculating the pile.

From her purse, she fidgeted with her bags of coins. Her plan was simple: transmute this metal into a piezo-arcanite crystal. From there, things would get a little complicated. She needed to entangle it to the main library, search the directory for Celestius Caelia, and hopefully send a message regarding the Nate-etan situation.

Caelia must be worried sick. Even worse, Marionette had lost Galah, the pink cockatoo given as a gift from her friend, on the island during the unsanctioned teleportation against her will.

She glared over her shoulder. Apollo was still sleeping, an arm thrown over his forehead. Except for looking dazzlingly handsome, he was useless. According to him, he and the Sol Bow were one, and he had spent his remaining mana fuelling their trip.

Stupid god! she cursed inwardly.

She knew he was more than he let on — he was a living god, after all — but he was also incredibly indolent.

I have to right this wrong. At least let Caelia know about my circumstances, she resolved.

Nate-etan and its native quokkas still needed rescuing from the lingering Treecrab menace. Her thoughts often drifted to Kaku, the heroic quokka warrior whose mighty pebbles had saved her life. That nostalgic feeling brought a faint smile to her face.

She stacked the coins, keeping the jingling sound to a minimum. It took a while, but she managed to form a formation — a magic circle of sorts. It required a massive amount of currency to transmute even a small shard of invaluable piezo-arcanite. This pattern would be the most optimal way to utilise Metamorphosis with the resources she had.

Determined, she clasped her hands together in prayer, feeling the surge of mana coursing through her body. She took a deep breath, recirculating the mana inside her core, purifying it, and assigning its function. Like a filtration process, the higher the recirculation, the purer the mana became.

A smug look painted her face as she hovered her palms over the coins. She was steady and precise, as the process demanded.

No mistakes now.

She took one final breath. "Metamorphosis!"

She chanted the word, her voice echoing in the small room. Blue light flashed, blindingly bright. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart thumped in her chest as she slowly forced one eye open.

A blue glowing crystal sat there, smaller than a bean.

A low groan startled her. She snapped her head toward the God of the Sun, but he just rolled toward the wall, turning his back on her.

She turned back to her grand prize. "It works!"

She clasped a hand over her mouth, muffling her delighted chuckle.

"Now, the final part..."

Marionette gently used tweezers to carefully pick up the crystal, placing it into a steel ring setting. A sharp chime rang out as the arc ring was established.

She couldn’t express how happy she was. It made the right tune, which meant her first-ever arc comm created without an arc smith was a success. Her days in Caelia’s care conferring arcane mechanics weren’t in vain. Her fingers trembled with excitement as she slid the ring onto her index finger.

"Any minute now!"

She lightly tapped the ring with her thumb.

Nothing happened.

She cocked her head to the side, self-doubt bubbling to the surface. Did she miscalculate the properties of the crystal somehow? Sweat formed on her forehead. She really, really wanted to cry.

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"Please work!"

She tapped it a few more times. Finally, a blank holographic image of a box flickered in front of her.

"That thing can’t establish the entanglement," Apollo’s boisterous voice boomed beside her, causing her to shriek.

"What?" She gasped, adjusting her clothes to make herself look presentable, despite the grease in her hair.

The god wore the condescending smirk he always did. "You’re using the piezo-arcanite to establish the entanglement with the main hub, aren’t you?"

That stunned her for a solid second. "How do you know?" she choked out. This entanglement technology was invented two thousand years ago. How could an ancient god know exactly how it worked?

"I can perceive things far more complex than your mortal mind. We are beings of the fifth dimension," Apollo said casually, waving his hand with disinterest. "That was before the Divine Finale, anyway." His usual sunny voice held a small hint of regret.

"O’ Mighty One," Marionette feigned her sweetest, softest tone. "Would you kindly grant this insignificant, unintelligent mortal some insight?"

He frowned, eyeing her intensely. "Fine... Since you’re being proper and graceful for once."

She almost grimaced at his words. Instead, she bobbed her head, wearing the falsest smile known to mortalkind.

Apollo puffed out his chiselled chest, the dim light touching his divine physique. He exuded an extreme, irresistible charm. "Your communication system bypasses the need for particles or waves to travel distances. It is genuinely the highest form of communication… For third-dimensional beings."

He looked back at her, making sure she was still following. After Marionette gave him a firm nod, he continued. "But it is not by the false. It is required to be identified; otherwise, the entanglement would be a jumbled mess. Who communicates with whom, and so on? Get it, Marie?"

"Ohhhh! A unique identifier!" Her eyes darted to the wooden ceiling, lingering a moment on her own answer. "How do we..." She made an invisible ball with one hand and gestured, shoving it into her ring. "...put it in, my lord?"

"I don’t know," he replied promptly, and laughed.

She blinked, baffled. "You don’t know, O’ Mighty One?" Her tone dripped with resentment.

"Well, it’s weird numbers and sequences. I lost interest there." He stuck a finger into his ear, acting aloof and slothful again.

Her hope drained from her. Her shoulders slumped. The past month of work had turned into nothingness. She sighed, her eyes turning glassy. Despair overwhelmed her chest, and tears threatened to flood her eyes.

Apollo noticed her sudden quietness. She was typically a creature of vibrant courage, resilient against all odds; now, however, she sat shrouded in a gloom that was tangible to the god’s eyes.

"I am an empathetic god, if you must know," he said, seeing the tears spilling from her beautiful eyes, leaving long streaks down her cheeks. Not so tough now…

There was no response but a soft sob.

"Fine, human," Apollo muttered under his breath, seeing the lady sink onto the table, burying her face.

His palm reached out, hovering over her red hair. Light blue slivers of energy weaved out of his palm and joined into her temples.

"I’ll indulge you for once," he whispered, so softly only he could hear.

"Gaia! What’s going on?" Marionette jerked upward. Her eyes saw the flashing of the screen, hazy and static images, but she knew it was the arc comm.

"So, Caelia, is it?" Apollo’s voice was a distant echo.

Before she could utter another word, the images shifted as she accelerated. Everything around her became streaks of vibrant, multicoloured light. She screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth. She reached the speed of light and then surpassed it. Her eyes moistened with tears; not from sadness, but from an irritating heat that stung her retinas. She squeezed them shut. Vision became the least of her concerns.

A sudden jolt told her she had stopped. She opened her right eye. After a few adjustments, the bright light subsided.

A brown-skinned woman with an inverted-triangular face and dreamy dark eyes stared back at her with astounded perplexity. She wore ornate titanium chainmail over her slender but athletic frame. Her long hair hung down her lower back like black silk of exquisite quality.

Celestius Caelia moved her palm, unshielding her eyes. "Ma... Marionette?!" she choked.

"It’s... It’s me, Caelia!" Marionette wiped the tears from her eyes.

It felt so surreal. She was there, but she wasn't actually there. The two of them stood on an empty plane of existence — darkness stretching five metres in every direction, like a pocket dimension for just the two of them.

"I must be dreaming." Caelia touched her frown, observing the pristine white floor beneath them.

"No, no!" Marionette grabbed her friend's hands. She could feel them just as if she were right there. This must be the divine method of communication, a concept imperceptible to her mortal mind. "Listen!" she said, her voice firm.

"Y~yes, Marie." Caelia gave a reluctant nod.

"You must go to Nate-etan Island! I’m sorry, I left Galah there. It’s a long story..." Her voice hurried, her breath short.

Caelia shook her head. "Galah is fine. We went there to search for you after not hearing from you for several months."

"You did?" Marionette’s eyes widened. "How are the quokkas?" she blurted.

"We exterminated the remaining invasive species there. The Treecrabs tasted terrible, though." Caelia grumbled. "There is one warrior of the island, Kaku is his name."

"Uh-huh?" The redhead nodded along eagerly.

Caelia hummed briefly as she closed her eyes, recounting the event. "He said you disappeared after defeating the King Treecrab—where have you been?" Deep concern saturated her tone.

"That’s a relief!" Marionette breathed out, clutching her chest. A mountain lifted from her heart, knowing Kaku and Galah had survived after all this time. A faint smile donned her lips.

"Well?" Caelia crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at her. Demanding.

"Oh! I found the Bow of Sol! But, there’s something... extra..." Marionette chuckled sheepishly.

"That’s good news, then." Caelia smiled widely, her regality intact — a proper lady of effortless elegance. "What kind of portal-commu-hybrid is this? An arc comm? No, there’s tactile feedback, even olfaction…" She paced a few metres to the left, observing as the dark boundary around them expanded. She didn’t want to come off as rude, but Marionette really stank.

"It’s a divine form of communication, I guess?" Marionette chuckled sheepishly; truthfully, she didn’t know how to explain it either.

A sudden jerk pulled at Marionette’s body. She began to accelerate again.

"Wait! Caelia! We’re looking for the Champion of Gaia, you were right! There is more than one—"

Her voice was lost in the travel. Everything became streaks of colour once more. She blinked the hot tears from her eyes until a final jolt signalled she was back in her room. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"That is a terrible way of communication!" she snapped at Apollo. Terrified.

His smug expression never faltered as he retracted his hand and clasped it behind his back in a magnificent pose. "That is..." He seemed amused by her struggle. "...due to your feeble mental capacity."

She gasped, jaw hanging open, offended. "That’s..." Words failed her.

"You took too damned long, by the way. Wouldn’t want to fry that brilliant brain of yours." His praise felt like a stab of insult.

She winced, resisting the anger boiling inside. "Whatever! We’re checking the next town tomorrow!" she said sternly, crossing her arms.

"Then—" Apollo yawned, turning his back toward her as he walked over to the bunkbed.

“Wait…” Marionette called, prompting him to halt, “Thanks…” Voice’s small.

Apollo smiled, "I bid you good night, my queen..." His words drawled as he climbed back up and went to sleep.

Marionette exhaled a long breath. She had entertained a thought of contacting Solis Aeternum, but after that light-speed trip, she wasn’t sure if it was worth begging the god and risking a fried brain.

She’d have to be wiser. Next time, she would need to bring an arc ring or two with her.