After Sathuna agreed to help remake the future that ensured my and Thorn's origin of meeting in hell. she quickly got to work. Taking us with her as we left her office and headed through the university.
"Afternoon, headmistress!"
"Hello, headmistress!"
"Greetings, coven leader."
The students and teachers at this witch academy greeted Sathuna happily on the way but many seemed confused and interested about my presence right next to her. There was even a teacher who had a particularly envious look.
"You can toy with him if you like." Sathuna requested. "He's been quite eager for my position lately and has even resorted to some nasty tricks."
"It still surprises me you have time to run a whole university considering the schemes you have progressing across the charted universe." Thorn admitted while i shot a small ball of ink into the mans head making him leap out of a window.
Skipping her way towards a wall it moved as she approached and opened up into a doorway letting us walk through into a hidden corridor. "It's impossible for me to do all tasks myself you know. My agents are all handpicked and educated by me personally from this very institution. You know a few. The witch of joy, the witch of steel, and the witch of cannibals. Though all this effort would not be needed if i could create a spiritual army like a kralscell such as yourself can do."
"I don't think any kralscell has an apocalyi army capable of the surgical precision your operatives excel at, Sathuna." I huffed in response.
As we walked the corridor we went down kept shifting and turning, like we were inside of a puzzle as the walls, floor and ceiling kept swapping places even as we walked on them but didn't feel the slightest misbalance
"Anyways, where are you taking us?" I asked.
"My private laboratory." A door dropped from the ceiling in the transforming corridor and opening in front of us the doors led into a vast glass observatory.
Work stations filled with advanced devices. Alchemy desks with rows of potions and poisons. There was a circle of desks each with a different purpose with stacks of books from the surrounding shelves on each of them along with blackboards filled with equations for Sathuna's projects on each of them.
"Ah, Mistress Sathuna." Rolling her way over a young girl in a wheelchair, about fourteen-years-old, came over and greeted us. "I've finished compiling the lists of actions from the [one-eyed wisdom seeker's] actions and have reorganised the blackmail evidence per your requests on behalf of my mother. Also, the mirror-eye's have information on the current movements of the kralscell's of fear and kralscell of evolution."
"Thank you, Flower." Twisting on her heel Sathuna introduced us. "Traveler this is my assistants daughter, Flower Encoila. One of my best students and currently filling the place of her sick mother. The witch of art."
"T-traveler?!" Stunned to know who i was the girl in a wheelchair beamed with adoration. "I-its such an honour to meet you! I've read all the papers you wrote about the effect of collective consciousness onto reality and the thesis of willpower's effect on causality. I-I've even been researching the Imginatrix Schematic for metaphysical singularity implementation that you created. I-if its alright with you i have a few questions?"
"Huh. Smart little thing." Patting the girls head in praise i did a quick scan of her mind and memory finding out what she wanted. "So its the mind-soul body implementation you don't understand, right?"
Gleaming with her gaze Flower acted like she was honoured for me to read her mind. "Yes! As i understood it the mind and soul are one but the body has the ability to sever them between rationale and emotional responses to increase or decrease an actions output. But to me it feels strange like it shouldn't work because of Substance Dualism credited earlier in the schematic thats stating the soul is separate from both if not one or the other."
"Thats because Substance Dualism focuses on questioning the difference and connection between the mind and body before discovering where the soul rests between and around the two dependent on the thinker. Think of it as a combination of quantum mechanics and the oxymoron paradox. You'll understand it more similarly to a tesseract thats within and outside of the object at the same time than in simpler terms."
"Within and without... yes. I see! Thank you very much, Traveler! I hope-"
"Ahem." Clearing her throat Sathuna shot Flower a glance reminding her of her duties.
"M-my apologies, mistress. I got a little excited. As you have a guest I'll head to my classes early." Rolling her wheelchair away Flower left the observatory letting me and Sathuna occupy it after she left.
Climbing out of my hood onto my shoulder Thorn shook his feathers off after yawning. "Its always infuriating when you suddenly become Einstein of the mind, pisspot."
"Meh. I have my moments." I said relaxed.
"Who's Einstein...?" Sathuna questioned quietly before ignoring the name thinking it was just Thorn's strange humour. "Traveler, Thorn. I'm not sure how long exactly it will take me to create a ritual that will allow me to retain my memories after Arthur Moonleaf's regressions, but what i am certain of is that i will need a device able to record the temporal data of what happens in these regressions and the mechanics behind them."
Thorn flew off my shoulder as I said, "so regardless there will be a few more regressions before you're able to bypass it for yourself."
"Correct. Now, chop off your left arm." Sathuna commanded while walking to a wall of the observatory that was actually a massive blackboard. "In order to create a device capable of retaining data on the quantum mechanics and mystic science of reversal time flow on a universal scale. It'll need to be made of a material capable of immunising the effects of time and keeping the data. You are currently the only thing that can produce such material."
Picking up a piece of chalk Sathuna tapped it against her chin thoughtfully for a spell not seeing what i was doing behind her.
"Granted that Outer God's or materials from outside the universe could be used but then I'd have no memory of creating them and no pliable method of retrieving them without your assistance. Though that would also mean you would have to locate and force your way through the Narrow Corridor to breach to
"Say what?" Already with my severed left arm dripping blood onto the clean floor of the observatory Sathuna looked back at me with a jaded expression. "Still need my arm?"
Watching a new arm grow along with a new sleeve of my coat from the slashed stump, Sathuna treaded over and tossed the cut off arm into a bowl on one of the central workshop desk's full of organic parts and creatures trapped in jars.
"Try not to dirty the floors will you?" She heartlessly requested. "Flower worked so hard with her magic to clean before we came in, Nameless."
"Sure." Tapping my foot in the blood on the floor it disintegrated leaving not a trace on the now clean wooden floor. "Now what?"
"We need a second me." Sathuna declared. "I can't focus on creating the ritual and counter equations while also creating the device that will allow you to record the energy flow of the universal regressions. I'll need a helper and unfortunately my assistant's aren't fit for such jobs as its outside their area of expertise."
Stepping away a worry ran up the back of my spine while Thorn also began to back away.
If she was going to ask me to clone her mind then that was something i was too scared to do. One of her is already enough to worry about.
"Relax. If i asked you to create a second me i would be worried about them trying to replace my place as well. We'd need people from the kralscell of invention's worshippers—the Ingenious Coalition. But who to pick? Ah, little Clara, she'll be of use. She excel's in mechanical invention but i doubt she's created a device using bones and nerve endings as the material. There is one other i would like to assist me in the ritual's equations but its doubtful they would assist us."
Eased by her words Thorn and i both calmed down. "Clara should be easy to convince but she'll be a little disgusted at first. Whose the second?"
"The third genius of the Ingenious Coalition. The foremost researcher on temporal displacement and anomalies as well as anything to do with time. A werewolf nicknamed [wild clock of fangs] by the
Recognising the name unlike me Thorn hopped closer to speak. "Didn't that guy go missing when he ventured into a blackhole a couple millennia back? Guy was famous for hunting and dissecting several exalted's of time but disappeared before the CGA could ever catch him. Heard he's pretty coo-coo as well."
"Oh he's alive and well, hence why the kralscell of invention hasn't revoked his position among the hundred geniuses and been added to the yearly Insight Accolades. Its been over nine-thousand years since anyone's seen him but he must still be submitting papers to the kralscell of invention."
Staring side-to-side i was left wondering who this person or more precisely werewolf was. Not someone i had ever heard of.
"His reputation came from before you were released from the
Speaking carefully Sathuna made sure not to mention the topic any further.
"It shouldn't be too difficult to recruit him with the bait of this topic. My mirror moths know where he is as well."
"Thats convenient." I blew out. Ignoring her slip of tongue.
"Yes. The CGA's inept pride made the search quite easy for me when the mirror moths hijacked their resources. He's on the planet Zlemja within a city called Krasnoversk in the
Recognising the planet as one from my many travels i recalled a particular trait of it. "If I remember rightly. Zlemja is a hub world for pseudo-humanoid races, no? Werewolves, vampires, mermen so on. They'll be wary of me when i show up suddenly."
"Yes, yes. A monster world thats frightened of human invaders. That was the case back tens of thousands of years ago but the planet these days is full of humans. With pseudo-humanoids and therianthrope's treated as the upper class." A scheming grin crept up Sathuna's mouth. "Well... most of them."
"Hmm. Classist monsters. Chase is bound to love that place if we bring him." Thorn hummed.
"That would be ill-advised." Sathuna warned. "Bringing the founder and ancestor of the Trewella Hunting Family known for the slaying of pseudo-humanoids? Therianthropes, and monstrous beings would be tantamount to bringing the boogeyman to life at their doorstep. Earl Fift might just run away thinking Chase is there for his bounty."
"Point taken." Thorn agreed with a frustrated shake of his wing.
Beginning to write equations on the blackboard with the chalk in her hand Sathuna said, "go and recruit the third genius now then. I'll have the preliminary theorem done to entice him by the time you get back and I'll have Flower contact Clara. I'll also lift the spatial distortions surrounding this observatory so you may come and go with your [mach void] as you please."
Thorn flew over to my shoulder and right as i was about to leave Sathuna imparted a few final words.
"Ah—i advise making it clearer that you're a leviathan and not a human, Traveler. Should make it considerably easier to reach Jin Fift. Especially since I'm forbidding you from simply kidnapping him for the sake of efficiency."
My and Thorn's faces drooped but we didn't argue. With a two fingered salute in parting i said, "thanks for the advice."
Then a pillar of light rushed up from beneath my feet, carrying me into the void across space and time to take me to the planet Zlemja."