Chapter 32: Lost Chapters [4]

  Something felt deeply amiss in her perception—her eyes, thoughts, expressions, the very essence that shaped her awareness had shifted. She knew her body was in peril; the thin blade gleaming menacingly in green light held her captive—pinned against the cold stone wall. It threatened to sever her neck, yet fascination overwhelmed what should have been terror.

  Her gaze remained locked on the blade—familiar scripts ran along its length, carved with an artistry almost surpassing her own. A question seeped through her mind like creeping madness, out of place in this moment of danger: was this a relic made by the gods, or was it the creation of the Architects’ themselves?

  If only her mind could scold itself for being this autistic, it would either succumb to its fixations or lose itself in words of deprivation. Estelle’s world lurched. The blade’s script flared, searing her neck with ember-bright heat, forcing her back against the cold, unforgiving wall.

  Without warning, as if the weight of the situation finally registered, cold rushed into her bones, strength fleeing from her limbs as she confronted what stood before her.

  “ANSWER ME!” The woman roared in a strange tongue, her voice rupturing the air with a might that seized Estelle’s heart.

  Estelle jolted, her eyes wincing as something strangled her hand, pinning her further against the wall. Confusion clouded her mind. She was certain she had never heard this language before—it sounded alien to her ears—yet somehow she understood what the woman was saying.

  Suddenly, the blade erupted into flames, as if drenched in fuel and ignited by a fleeting spark. Fire burst from the crossguard, racing along the carved script like an activation sequence until the entire weapon blazed. Heat swelled, light flashing in Estelle’s eyes, overwhelming her senses and yanking her consciousness back from wherever it had strayed.

  'Wait—how do I reply?' The thought flashed through her mind, but her lips moved of their own accord. "Wait! Wait! Wait!" Estelle's head retreated further, pressing into the wall as she tried to distance herself from the blade. "Wait! Just wait, for god's sake!"

  “Huh?” The woman’s head snapped up, eyes widening in shock.

  Even through the burka, Estelle caught the flicker of recognition—the way those familiar eyes narrowed, as if caught by something unexpected. Black eyeliner traced beneath the tear ducts, highlighting the slight tremor in the muscles around them. Her gray pupils were constricted, subtle but telling. Even with most of her face concealed, Estelle had no doubt—the woman was confused.

  ‘Huh?’ Estelle felt tainted with a similar confusion as realization dawned. Even before she could form the words, her mind understood: ‘This woman may not understand me the same way as I do. That—or, she has recognized me as an Architect.’

  The grip on her wrists tightened without warning, a vise clamping down. A sharp, involuntary gasp escaped her lips, morphing into a groan. "Aergh! Wait—can't I...can't I speak!? You dumb ass fu—!"

  “Tissan! Come over!” the woman abruptly interjected, her glare never leaving Estelle’s face. “I need help!”

  Shadows flickered at the edge of Estelle's vision, snapping her attention upward. Her eyes widened as a hulking figure emerged from behind the woman. Harsh light from behind cast its face in darkness, yet revealed enough—an inhuman head of cold metal, etched with ancient patterns reminiscent of Aztec carvings from her previous world. Deep grooves cut across its surface like ritualistic scars. Through these shadows, a purple glow seeped outward, pulsing with unnatural life, tracing the cryptic etchings before coalescing at the center to form a 'T'. The sight sent a primal chill down Estelle's spine, yet her mind screamed with flashes of provocative inspiration.

  ‘That’s so fucking cool—is this an android? Maybe a living artifact? It definitely looks like something an Architect would create. Or wait, no. Had a lich occupying this mechanical body? A revenant or a wandering spirit possessing this artifact? Would this thing let me take selfies?' Estelle swallowed.

  Her mind raced with strange thoughts, taking her to places she never knew possible. Yet she was keenly aware that her impulsiveness threatened to lead her somewhere dangerous. She groaned, biting down on her teeth. 'What am I thinking? Please stop thinking, my mind is so noisy.'

  A sharp beep suddenly rang out, followed by a coarse mechanical voice—neither distinctly male nor female, its tone filled with white noise as if filtered through an old radio speaker: "I am already searching—"

  Estelle startled. The mechanical head's faint glow suddenly exploded into bright purple, moving in erratic patterns across its etchings as if speaking. Speaking. Her ears caught the mechanical voice—scuffed and blown out into stereo. Confusion settled deeper. 'What does he mean by that? What are they talking about... What about the others?'

  She wanted to see more—but the massive frame blocked most of her view of the room. She caught distant murmurs, shuffling of footsteps—and light shifting behind the hulking giant's back. With her limited range of motion, Estelle immediately gave up trying, watching instead as the mechanical head continued its interesting light show across its metallic surface. She was surprised, still baffled by her calm reaction to such a situation, and took the moment to rein in her thoughts.

  ‘Estelle, what is he doing? I don’t know—I don’t remember. Am I going to die? This vessel, possibly—but I should be fine, right? That’s how I wrote the Architects’ race. That’s the reason why I picked this race in the first place. Do I still try to escape? Just try—it might be impossible. I don’t even know what race these people belong to, their bloodlines, or what’s possessing that mechanical body. They could have abilities I’ve never accounted for. What about resisting? I don’t even know how to fight—let alone know what this body can do. Though, can I even use the powers from my original body? The Creator’s Mark?’

  "Tissan?" A voice—speaking an odd, unfamiliar language—pierced through her thoughts abruptly.

  Estelle’s focus shifted, her eyes darted to the figure. ‘Tissan—Is that the mechanical head’s name?’

  The mechanical head's lights pulsed erratically before dimming, finally forming a crooked 'X' shape where the surface etchings disrupted the pattern. "Not enough; what she spoke relates to 49 different languages. Hnghh, this is troublesome..."

  "49 languages?" the woman muttered, glancing over her shoulder. "That's a first. What do you mean by troublesome?"

  'Eh?' Estelle's head snapped up in surprise—a movement that instantly caught the woman's attention.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The woman whirled back, slamming Estelle harder against the wall—her eyes flickering black to white as an aching throb spread across her entire back. Estelle groaned, watching as the woman's eyes blazed bright against the room's green ambient glow. "Move again and I'll separate your head from your neck," she snarled.

  Despite the threat and the searing heat against her throat, Estelle's focus drifted elsewhere. She winced but kept her eyes fixed on the mechanical being, gaze traveling downward in an attempt to see more of its form beneath the heavy drapes. Her expression fell as realization struck. 'Oh shit—oh shit. What does that mean? Does it have some kind of mechanical limb that accesses data networks? Wait—if it does—'

  Abruptly, her wandering thoughts collapsed into silence, her heartbeat thundering in her ears—suddenly the only reality that mattered. A second stretched into eternity as she dragged air into resistant lungs, her scattered thoughts crystallizing into a single, terrifying realization: '—Won't they discover I'm an Architect?'

  Estelle's vision tunneled, focusing with razor clarity on the mechanical head that could spell her doom. 'This is ba—'

  A mechanical chime sliced through her mental chaos, yanking her awareness back to her physical body.

  'What an odd sound—did that come from the mechanical head?' The random observation floated through her mind even as cold terror continued to race down her spine, her heart hammering against her ribs.

  "I suggest you shouldn't become aggressive like that—" the mechanical voice intoned through a layer of white noise.

  'Probably from the head, yes—' Estelle's mind supplied automatically, fragmenting her attention.

  "That person might be someone from the old world," the mechanical voice continued monotonously.

  Estelle's jaw clenched, teeth grinding as she fought to contain the rising tide of panic. 'Shit. This is bad—this is really bad for us now. Should I bite my tongue and hope it kills me? Really, Estelle? Resorting to this again?' She wanted to shake her head at her own catastrophizing, but her body remained acutely aware of the blade pressed against her neck. 'You know what, Estelle. Let's just wait it out—if I die now, it would be fortunate. And I highly doubt some kind of mind control magic can influence an Architect's vessel—I know it's not possible, considering the stories we wrote.'

  "Huh?" The woman tilted forward slightly, confusion evident in her eyes. "From what now?"

  Abruptly, the light wavered—the glow cast on the woman's burka graduated slowly from fiery brightness to the ambient green of the room. Caught in the shifting illumination, Estelle felt an overwhelming urge to slam her head against the metal ground, anything to stop her racing fascination.

  Still, her attention snagged on the source of the changing light—the sword's etched scripts, which had blazed with ember-like intensity, were now dimming from top to bottom as if being drained of power. Estelle could only watch, her restless eyes cataloging every detail as the searing heat against her skin vanished, instantly replaced by a probing coldness that made her hyperaware of her own skin. 'That sword—magical sword, that's so cool.'

  Another mechanical beep rang, pulling Estelle's attention to the mechanical head as it spoke: "The data that matched his language are all 'part of the old world'; we can only assume that this person might have awakened from the sarcophagus."

  "Huh?" Another confused sound escaped the woman's lips, this time—the grip on Estelle's hands weakened along with the sword falling inches away. The woman frowned, "I thought you said that living fossils had nothing to do with the ancients?"

  A mechanical beep, stronger this time as the mechanical head replied, "The correct term is 'Remnant,' Miss Sylveine."

  Estelle's jaw vibrated with the bone-deep thrum of her clenched teeth, soft muscles yielding to pressure as she fought to suppress the urge to blurt out, 'Actually—that's not necessarily true. Go fact check with the people in Soliel Archipelago and tell me otherwise. Oh, wait—did the mechanical head say I'm a remnant? Like the category of people who survived the Ecliptic War?'

  A chilling cold ran down her spine, then abruptly dispersed across her skin, sending every hair on end. The tension in her body released in an instant. Her heart, which had momentarily stalled, resumed beating—but this time, not with fear. Relief flooded her instead. A shiver tickled through her, and a thought surfaced: 'Oh... I see. I didn't speak in the Architect's language—I spoke in my native tongue. The same language I created for the Remnants back in my paranoid days... to justify why some maps and locations still use Veroy. I thought...'

  She exhaled, sinking against the wall, her body finally loosening. 'I could give myself an excuse... But… still—why can I understand their language when they don't understand mine? Does this body… have some kind of automatic translation feature I’m unaware of? But—that doesn't make sense,' Estelle gulped. 'If that were the case, I don't see why they can't understand me?’

  Another mechanical beep drew her attention. "Now—would you allow me to communicate with possibly a 'living-artifact,' Miss Sylveine?" The mechanical head spoke, still maintaining the same monotone, white noise still prominent.

  Yet, for some reason, Estelle couldn't help but feel unsettled by those words—words from a language she had never heard but could understand regardless. Something felt fundamentally wrong with these people. They didn't behave the way she expected—she thought she would be killed immediately, or perhaps cursed into believing their cult.

  Except for the prominent smell in the air, probably from dead bodies, they didn't smell burnt or carry a particular aroma. 'Not only that,' Estelle shifted her gaze to the mechanical head, the one she had initially mistaken for a helmet. 'I don't remember their race—but I don't think you would find something like this among the cultists.'

  With forced calm, Estelle gathered her scattered thoughts, listening intently as dread coiled beneath her mannered stillness. Her heart pounded, and her breath threatened to hitch, her mind struggling to hold onto composure.

  Something began to move beneath the mechanical head's draping. The fabric pulsed and writhed, countless points pressing outward in patterns that defied counting—an endless shifting of tauts that drew her eye despite her mounting horror. The mechanical head continued, its monotone voice suddenly sinister in its detachment. "It would be in our best interest to establish relations and convince him for our cause—recruit him when the time is right. After all, knowledge of the past is hard to come by these days—even the contents within these metals."

  With a sickening rustle of fabric, something stirred within the mechanical being—a groan of shifting metal, the whir of hidden cogs grinding against timeworn gears. Then came the first limb, matte black, its surface gleaming with the sickly green glow bleeding from the walls. A sharp, metallic snap echoed as it extended fully.

  Another followed. Then another. And another. Joints locked into place with precise, mechanical clicks, yet their movements held an uncanny, organic fluidity. Eight arms unfolded in perfect symmetry, their segmented fingers mismatched—some eerily slender, others blunt and jagged like tools forged for implied purposes.

  Estelle’s breath caught in her throat. Her mind reeled, struggling to make sense of the grotesque elegance before her. There was beauty in the precision, in the way the arms moved with effortless control. But fear laced itself through that awe—an instinctive, visceral terror. The contrast overwhelmed her, leaving her thoughts blank, unable to reconcile the opposing emotions.

  As the arms unfurled to their full span—like a peacock displaying its vibrant feathers, yet in a grotesque spectacle—the being spoke, "Can you help Fantallion? While I—"

  The mechanical head shifted, light rays in the etchings vanishing for a heartbeat before flickering back as a crude smiley face—a parody of human expression that screamed wrongness through every fiber of Estelle's being. It turned directly toward her, and despite the simplistic emote eyes, Estelle felt herself being dissected, cataloged, recorded—every secret laid bare.

  It extended its many hands outward in a grotesque mockery of welcome. The glow on its face shifted to a blood-red hue, and it lowered its head to reveal what had been shadowed behind—a translucent white circular halo, hovering with an unnatural light that cast no shadows.

  Estelle's heart hammered against her ribs as waves of ice cascaded down her spine. The horror spoke, its voice now layered with harmonics that seemed to bypass her ears, white noise continuing to vibrate into her skull:

  "I provide the great revelations known to man, to show light onto this poor soul's dark corridors to the right path."