Wally Naugus didn't turn, but his tiny tail under his pants did indeed twitch—once, sharply—like a cat flicking away an insect. The wizard's silhouette against the moonlight was jagged, his cloak flaring behind him like wings as he strode forward, the Anarchy Beryl humming louder with every step deeper into Lady Ciara's territory. "Dig? Oh no, my dear Ooma Arachnis," he chuckled before continuing, "We won't be digging. We'll be *excavating*."
His voice dropped into something low and liquid, the syllables slithering between his fangs. "After all, corpses don't bury themselves—and neither do gods."
The Beryl pulsed violently in his grip, whether in agreement or disagreement, who could say?
And with a new lead, Wally Naugus seemed to visibly calm, back to his caring self again, " Come on along them, Maxx Acorn certainly won't topple himself after all!" He joked lightly as he and Arachnis moved forward, deep into the territory of Lady Ciara, one of the original Freedom Fighters; a name used by many groups who fought against other's freedoms.
The air grew thicker with the stench of decaying vegetation and something metallic—like old blood left to congeal in the sun. Wally Naugus' pincer traced the contours of the Beryl absentmindedly, its erratic pulses syncing with his own irregular chimeric heartbeat. "Tell me, my dear Ooma Arachnis," he murmured, voice dripping with absent minded curiosity, "do you ever wonder what lies beneath Lady Ciara's meticulous gardens? The roots run deep here... deeper than even she realizes." The Anarchy Beryl flickered in response, casting jagged shadows across his confident smirk.
Ahead, the path split—one side manicured with roses that wept crimson petals, the other choked with thorned vines that twitched like sleeping serpents. Wally Naugus didn't hesitate; his boots crushed the roses into pulp, their scent curdling into something cloyingly sweet as the Beryl in his grip pulsed hungrily. "Lady Ciara prunes her gardens daily," he mused, kicking aside a shattered marble statue of some forgotten Freedom Fighter victim.
"But roots remember what the shears try to erase." The soil beneath their feet shuddered as Naugus knelt, pressing the Beryl fragment into the earth like a key turning in a long rusted lock. The ground split with a sound like snapping vertebrae, revealing strata of fused bones and corroded metalwork—an ossuary of forgotten revolutions.
Ooma Arachnis recoiled as the stench of centuries old decay surged upward, her mandibles clicking in reflexive disgust. Naugus inhaled deeply, his chimera eyes rolling back in ecstasy. "Can you find out where exactly the next Anarchy Beryl is? This place reeks of corruption and death."
Her many children nodded in agreement at that.
The ossuary pulsed faintly now, as if disturbed dreams were shifting in their sleep. Old banners—half fused into the stone—fluttered though there was no wind. Emblems of past "Freedom Fighters," each group any thing but righteous in it's own era, each convinced that history would absolve them.
It always did, eventually.
Bones didn't argue.
After all, it's not like they could
"Ahhh," Wally Naugus sighed, rising to his full height. His cloak settled around him like a living thing, its edges fraying into smoke. "Do you hear that? The sound of certainty rotting." He tapped the Anarchy Beryl against his knuckle. The gem responded with a discordant thrum, like laughter run backward.
Beneath their feet, Lady Ciara's manicured gardens trembled. The roses curled inward—their petals blackening at the edges—as Naugus pressed the Beryl into the earth once more. The soil split open with a wet gasp, revealing veins of pulsating corruption beneath. The scent of spoiled honey and burning copper rose thickly. "There you are," Wally Naugus murmured. "Playing hard to get."
Ooma Arachnis hesitated—just for a moment—before stepping closer. Her many eyes reflected the Anarchy Beryl's sickly, toxic green glow, matching the one in Wally Naugus's hand.
Even in type of eerie glowing frequency.
"Why hello there, I see you found the Anarchy Beryl I so carefully placed for you lot to find." A voice called out to them from seemingly nowhere, yet everywhere at once, as Lady Ciara herself emerged from the twisting vines—her form flickering between corporeal and shadow, like smoke caught in a strobe light. The roses at her feet didn't wither; they *bent*, their thorns elongating into jagged hooks as if eager to taste flesh. Her smile was a sickle moon, sharp enough to draw blood. "Though I must admit, Wally Naugus darling, you're slower than I anticipated. I expected you to come digging *hours* ago. Though perhaps that is because of the company you've had tag along with you during this journey of yours?" She finished as her projection peered over at Ooma Arachnis and her many children.
Wally Naugus' grip on the Anarchy Beryl tightened—just slightly—but his smirk never faltered, "I suppose you have The Augur of Apollous attempting to hijack my Ixis Magicks power again." The chuckle that followed was velvet lined menace, his short rhino tail curling beneath his robes like a scorpion ready to thrust outwards, "But that doesn't matter, what do you want Lady Ciara? Surely not just to mock me."
Lady Ciara's laughter was the sound of wind chimes strung with razor wire—delicate, deadly. She stepped forward, her shadow stretching unnaturally long across the corrupted soil, twisting into shapes that made even Wally Arachnis' spiderlings skitter back. "Mock you? Oh, Wally Naugus at least, I *adore* you," she crooned, fingers trailing along thin air, "Well, I adore your power at the very least. Anyways, if you want that Anarchy Beryl there and where to find the next one, you have to do me a very, very, very tiny favor. If you don't mind at least?"
"And what, pray tell, would this 'very, very, very tiny favor' be, if we did take this Anarchy Beryl?" Wally Naugus sneered, his pincer twitching as he rolled the Beryl between his fingers—its sickly glow pulsing faster now, like a second heartbeat syncing with his own corrupted rhythm. The air between them crackled with unspoken threats, the scent of ozone and rotting roses thickening as Lady Ciara's smile widened, her teeth gleaming like polished bone in the dim light.
She leaned in, close enough that the thorns woven into her hair brushed against Wally Naugus' cheek, drawing a thin line of ichor that sizzled against his chimera skin. "I just need you to deliver a letter to someone in Castle Acorn, to a certain... associate of mine. If you please?"
"And by that you mean a spy?" Ooma Arachnis asked while hissing, all too familiar with the world of spies and subterfuge, her mandibles clicking sharply.
Lady Ciara's grin widened, her fingers curling around an envelope that hadn't been there moments before—its wax seal the color of dried blood, stamped with a thorned rose. "You know me all too well." She said as she handed the letter to Wally Naugus—who recoiled slightly at the way the parchment squirmed faintly in his grip, as if something inside it were breathing. "Consider it a... mutual exchange of interests," she purred, stepping back as the vines around her writhed in anticipation. "The Beryl is yours, and my message reaches its destination. Fair, no?"
The Anarchy Beryl pulsed violently in Wally Naugus' other hand, its corruption seeping into his veins like ink in water—his chimera eyes flickering between suspicion and hunger. He could feel its power humming, whispering promises of dominion, of flesh reforged, of old gods waking beneath Mobius' skin. But beneath that hunger, sharper than any thorn, was the sting of manipulation. He inhaled sharply, the scent of decay clinging to his tongue. "And if we refuse?"
A beat of silence.
Then—laughter.
Lady Ciara's shadow elongated, swallowing the light as her form dissolved into a swirl of petals and smoke, her voice echoing from everywhere at once: "Then you'll never find the next Beryl shard, and whatever's left of your dignity will be buried here with the rest of the fools who thought they could outplay me." The vines around them *twitched*, their thorns glistening with something too thick to be dew.
Ooma Arachnis' mandibles clicked in quiet alarm as Wally Naugus' fingers tightened around the squirming letter—his chimera pupils dilating into vertical slits while the Anarchy Beryl's hum climbed to a fever pitch in his other hand. He exhaled through jagged teeth, steam curling from his nostrils like a bull preparing to charge, before snapping the letter against his palm with a crack that sent spiderlings skittering.
"Fine then," he growled, tail lashing beneath his robes. "But if this parchment so much as *whispers* treason, I'll feed you to your own roses branch by using my Crystalline Magic on The Augur of Apollous himself." The threat hung between them, jagged and visceral—but Lady Ciara only smiled wider, her shadow slithering across the fractured ground like spilled ink.
Her thorns trembled in anticipation, their hooked tips dripping something that smelled suspiciously like honeyed venom. Wally Naugus tucked the squirming letter into his cloak with a snarl, the Anarchy Beryl flaring brighter in response—its corruption sinking deeper into his flesh, rewriting him syllable by syllable.
"Now then," he hissed, flexing claws that now gleamed with the Anarchy Beryl's sickly verdant luminescence—the power slithering up his veins like a parasite claiming its host. Wally Naugus inhaled sharply, tasting ozone and the metallic tang of his own deteriorating flesh. The corruption was *delicious*.
"Let's see what other *gifts* Lady Ciara left buried here for us, shall we?" His chuckle was a wet, rattling thing, punctuated by the crunch of bones beneath his boots as he kicked aside another skeletal remnant—this one still clutching a rusted blade engraved with the insignia of some long dead rebellion against her.
Ooma Arachnis hesitated—her spiderlings skittering in agitated circles—before following, her many eyes darting between the pulsating veins of corruption threading the earth. "You trust her?" The question was a blade wrapped in silk.
Wally Naugus didn't turn, but his tail swayed angerly like a cat's, before he answered her, "Anarchy Below no, my dear Ooma Arachnis," he chuckled darkly, fingers tightening around the pulsing Beryl shard as its sickly glow painted his jagged teeth in emerald hues. "I don't *trust* her—I *use* her." The ground beneath them shuddered again, this time in response to his words rather than the Beryl's power, as if the earth itself recoiled from the truth in them. He knelt, pressing his free hand into the soil—fingers sinking deep into the cold, damp flesh of the earth—and exhaled a slow, rattling breath. "But make no mistake," he murmured, claws flexing as something *shifted* beneath the surface, "she's playing the same game as Maxx Acorn after all, just with a slightly different strategy and starting point."
Above them, the twisted branches of Lady Ciara's garden arched like ribs in a carcass, their thorns dripping with a substance too thick to be sap. Ooma Arachnis' spiderlings skittered nervously along her shoulders, their tiny legs tapping out a frantic rhythm against her chitin as Wally Naugus *dug*, his claws scraping against something metallic buried just beneath the layer of bones.
"Ah," he purred, the sound vibrating unnaturally in his throat—a predator's satisfaction. His grip tightened around the unearthed object, and when he wrenched it free, the Anarchy Beryl in his other hand *screamed*—a soundless, psychic burst that sent Ooma Arachnis staggering back, her mandibles clicking in pained alarm.
In Wally Naugus' palm lay a second shard—smaller, jagged, but pulsing with the same virulent energy as its counterpart. The moment the two fragments neared each other, their glow intensified, threads of corruption lashing out like living tendrils to fuse them together.
The resulting surge hit like a migraine wrapped in lightning.
Wally Naugus arched backward as the two Anarchy Beryl shards screamed toward one another, their edges liquefying into viridian light. The air buckled. Gravity briefly lost interest in doing its job. Bones, rusted weapons, and fragments of old banners lifted from the ossuary floor, orbiting him in a slow, obscene halo like relics around a false saint.
Ooma Arachnis cried out—not in fear alone, but in faint, primal, recognition of forces beyond her mortal comprehension.
"Wally—stop—!" Her mandibles clacked in a frantic staccato as her spiderlings scattered, clinging to roots, stones, and each other. Some were not fast enough. One was pulled screaming into the growing knot of green light, its tiny body unraveling into threads of raw possibility before vanishing entirely.
Wally Naugus didn't answer.
He simply couldn't.
That was because the Anarchy Beryl was no longer merely humming; it was speaking, and it had found a voice shaped exactly like his.
'Yes, yes, this is where you hid it'
The thought was not quite his own, but it wore his cadence, his old arrogance, his theatrical contempt. Memory and magic blurred together, and for a terrible moment Wally Naugus was no longer standing in Lady Ciara's garden.
He was standing in a courtroom that no longer existed.
Tall marble columns cracked and burning, banners torn down, the Sigil of Royal Acorns shattered underfoot. He smelled incense and blood. He heard chanting—not prayers, but verdicts.
Guilty.
Aberration.
Threat to Order.
The courtroom dissolved like ink in water, replaced by the scent of charred circuitry and molten alloy—Sonic the Hedgehog stood amid the wreckage of Sector 7's training arena, his fingers trailing the still glowing edge of a shattered drone. The air tasted of ozone and burned hydraulic fluid, all of his ribs broken, his right eye swollen, his left arm bloody, and an amount of Anarchy Beryl energy that could only be achieved by harnessing the power of seven Anarchy Beryl to transform into a fabled empowered state.
Wally Naugus could almost feel the traces of blood from Maxx Acorn himself.
But there was no body around.
Then he saw Sonic the Hedgehog looking around confused.
He was looking for something.
No.
He was looking for a body too.
He was looking for Maxx Acorn's body.
Then he heard Ooma Arachnis's voice call out to him, like a voice though a water filter, "Wally!" she screamed again, snapping him back to reality as the two Anarchy Beryl shards were no longer attempting to fuse together with a sound like cracking ice.
Yet still, their combined glow casting grotesque shadows that writhed against the ossuary walls. Wally Naugus gasped, his chimera claws trembling as the corruption surged up his arm in jagged veins, rewriting his flesh in real time. The scent of burning fur and ozone ran rapid as he threw the twin Anarchy Beryl about eight feet away.
"Wally! Are you okay?!" His dear Ooma Arachnis called out and ran to him in worry.
And to be fully honest, Wally Naugus didn't quite know the answer to that question himself.
What he saw, was that the old future that Sonic the Hedgehog shattered, was that the new future, or was that the future he subconsciously wanted to happen?
He had so many fucking questions now...
Wally Naugus lay there for half a heartbeat longer than was comfortable for anyone involved, staring up at the rib-cage canopy of Lady Ciara's garden while the world very rudely insisted on existing again.
The bones stopped floating first. They clattered back to the ground in an arrhythmic rain—skulls cracking, banners tearing, rusted blades snapping under their own forgotten weight. The air snapped back into obedience with a concussive thoom, and the sickly emerald glow dimmed to a sullen throb where the two Anarchy Beryl shards lay embedded in the soil, hissing softly like coals dropped in wet earth.
Wally violently coughed from it all.
Something green and viscous splattered against his sleeve.
"…Hmph," he muttered, blinking several times as sensation clawed its way back into his limbs. His vision doubled, tripled, then slowly negotiated its way back to one coherent world. "Well. That was… informative. Possibly."
Ooma Arachnis skidded to a halt beside him, her many legs digging furrows into the corrupted loam. She crouched low, mandibles spread in alarm, her children clustering behind her like a living cloak. Several were missing.
She noticed.
Her silence sharpened.
"You threw them," she hissed, one eye flicking toward the Beryl shards, another never leaving Wally's face. "You almost let them finish merging. Do you have any idea what would have happened if they—"
"Yes, yes, catastrophic apotheosis, reality aneurysm, choir of screaming constants," Wally waved a trembling claw dismissively as he pushed himself upright, cloak smoking faintly where corruption still crawled along the fabric. "I've read the pamphlets. Very dull. No illustrations."
He slowly swayed.
Ooma lunged forward, bracing him with two legs before he could topple back into the ossuary. Her grip was firm, grounding, and very deliberately not gentle.
"You saw something," she said quietly.
Wally froze.
For a brief moment, the theatrical mask slipped. His chimera pupils contracted, then expanded again, as if arguing with themselves. His tail curled tight around his leg, the tip twitching in small, involuntary spasms.
"…Yes," he admitted, voice lower now, stripped of its usual singsong menace. "I did see something Ooma."
He straightened, carefully disentangling himself from her grasp, and turned his gaze back toward the shards. They were no longer reaching for each other, but they were aware. He could feel that much. Like two magnets sulking after being separated.
"I saw a future," he continued, pacing slowly despite the way his joints protested. "Or a memory of one. Or a rehearsal of one I wanted. The Anarchy Beryl are terribly unspecific about there use of grammar."
Ooma Arachnis tilted her head, listening.
"Sonic the Hedgehog," Wally went on, tasting the name like something sharp. "He was broken. Bleeding. He was surrounded by enough radiating Anarchy Beryl energy to turn continents into suggestions. And Maxx Acorn…" His jaw tightened. "Absent. Possibly not dead. Just… gone. As if history itself misplaced him somehow."
He laughed once, short and humorless. "The irony is exquisite."
The ground beneath them gave a low, unhappy groan. Far above, the garden shifted—vines recoiling, roses slowly unknotting themselves as Lady Ciara's influence retreated, at least for now. Whatever she'd planted here had been disturbed enough to lose interest in subtlety.
Ooma's mandibles clicked, slower this time. "Do you believe it?"
Wally considered that. He knelt again, but more cautiously, one claw brushing the edge of a skull half buried in the dirt.
"Belief is such a pedestrian word," he said at last. "I'd say… the Beryl showed me a possible inevitability. Sonic the Hedgehog will infact reshape Mobius, that is inevitable, but how is where the possibilities come in."
He reached out, tracing a sigil in the air. The Anarchy Beryl shards trembled, then lifted smoothly into his grasp without touching, orbiting his palm like sullen moons. He did not let them get close again.
"Lady Ciara wanted me distracted," he mused. "She wanted me only worried about the letter. About Castle Acorn. About spies and thorns and roses." His grin returned, thin and sharp. "Instead, she reminded me what's actually at stake."
Ooma Arachnis exhaled slowly. "And what is that?"
Wally looked toward the distant horizon, where the garden ended and the world resumed pretending it was stable.
"That the future is fragile," he said softly. "And someone—perhaps me, perhaps Sonic, perhaps the unborn Chosen One, or perhaps some idiot with a crown—keeps breaking it, has kept breaking it, or will soon keep breaking it in the exact same places."
He rolled his shoulders, forcing life back into aching muscles, then turned with a grin that was once again far too confident for comfort.
"Come along, my dear Arachnis," he said brightly. "We have a letter to deliver, a queen of thorns to disappoint later, and several timelines to annoy."
As they began to move, the ossuary behind them settled, bones knitting back into uneasy stillness. Deep underground, something ancient shifted in its sleep, dreaming of emerald green light and a certain big blue blur running endlessly toward a future that refused to stay buried.
Wally Naugus did not look back.
He was too busy wondering whether the future he'd seen was a warning…
…or a promise.