Chapter 1: Blood Cube

The office of the Infinite Librarian. A vast room shaped like a cylinder, lined with books that towered over a broad desk lit from beneath by the holographic interface.

Sitting casually in the stuffed chair behind that broad desk was a man in a green suit, with his blonde hair cleanly pulled back into a tail. His eyes were inscrutable behind glasses that glowed from the reflection of that holographic interface.

Before the desk, sitting in the chairs for visitors, was a young man and a boy.

"Dr. Scrya". The young man greeted, extending his hand. He was obviously a civilian. Rather than a uniform, he wore a suit; shirt, pants, shoes, jacket were all richly, deeply black. But, tie and trim was a bright shade of yellow that popped out of that black suit. His clothes were of high quality. The sharp effect of his manner of dress distracted from his fundamentally uninteresting appearance: modestly black hair in an unremarkable cut, and a face that was neither ugly nor handsome, neither strong nor weak.

The professor rose from behind his desk, and leaned forward, grasping the extended hand and shaking. Yuuno Scrya smiled, turning his attention to his other guest.

"Professor," greeted the boy with an easy, confident smile, as he rose to also shake hands with the sage before him. The boy also wore suit and tie, workmanlike blues with a white shirt, but over that his long white coat was obviously designed to invoke the lab, even if it was pressed and starched. Purple hair and a natural expression of intellectual sharpness served to draw attention to his face-rather the opposite of his taller compatriot.

All three sat down. "So this is our first time meeting face to face." The professor began. "And before anything else, I'd like to welcome the pair of you to the Infinity Library. Work hard, and I will do everything to support you as you reach for your dreams."

"Thank you, Dr. Scrya." The boy said. His voice was warm, but there was something in his intonation, in the way he spoke, that gave his every word an edge of sarcasm.

"I'm grateful for the opportunity to study under you, sir." Said the young man. Compared to the boy, his way of speaking lacked the emotional complexity for sarcasm: he was in every way earnest.

Yuuno nodded his thanks. "Since you've been accepted as research scholars, that means your time will be split between performing your own thesis investigations and filling investigation requests from all over the TSAB." He paused, and his smile grew lopsided. "In theory you should be splitting your time evenly, but..." Yuuno shrugged. "Personally, I struggle to fit my own research in between the outside requests."

The young man and the boy glanced askance, making eye contact.

"Well!" Yuuno Scrya said, standing up and clapping his hands. "For now, I'll give you the tour of the facility." He smiled, more honestly than before. "There's always work, but to be surrounded by this much accumulated knowledge, I honestly feel blessed, and I hope you also will..."

He trailed off, looking up.

The door to his office had opened. Peeking inside, was a red-haired girl with dog ears.

"What is it, Arf?" Yuuno asked.

"Fate is on band three." The familiar replied. "It's important."

He looked down at the two before him. "You've both accepted and signed the confidentiality contracts?"

The two looked at each other, before looking back, and nodding.

"Very well." Yuuno looked up. "Arf, just route it into my office."

Arf nodded slowly, gaze lingering on the two youn men in the chairs. She wanted to ask something like, "shouldn't they leave the room", but... that had already been addressed by Yuuno's question, and they were going to be his apprentices. That is the relationship between professor and graduate student.

Above Yuuno's desk, at right angles so all three men could see, a holographic screen opened.

A beautiful woman, in the severe uniform of the TSAB enforcers. Beneath her videograph, she was identified as Captain Fate Testarossa.

She smiled when she made eye contact with Yuuno. It was an empty expression, a tug at her lips that did not reach any higher on her face. "Yuuno." She greeted.

"Fate." He nodded back. Seeing her eyes flicker to the other two in the room, he gestured. "These two are graduate students working on their doctorates under me," he said, "Hilux Nabarria", he gestured at the young man, who smiled back, "and Prison Sessanta." The boy nodded solemnly to the enforcer.

"And this is Fate Testarossa." He said, somewhat unnecessarily, indicating the screen.

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance," the young man-Hilux-graciously said.

"Charmed." The boy-Prison-allowed, with an enigmatic smile.

"The pleasure is mine." Fate said, somewhat by rote. Her attention returned to Yuuno. "We have a situation." She grimly announced.

"Oh?" Yuuno encouraged her to continue.

"Fourteen days ago there was a space-time incursion on Unadministered World number 82. Corporal Subaru Nakajima was dispatched from Disaster Relief to provide humanitarian aid, and Private, First Class, Teana Lanster was dispatched by the Enforcers to investigate." Fate grimaced. "We've known for some time that their Supreme Dictat has been secretly pursuing forbidden research."

Yuuno frowned. "You make it sound like there's a 'but' in there."

"Over the course of the investigation, PFC Lanster determined that the Jetter Central Physical Research Lab, their premier scientific institution, lacked the technological capability to stabilize an incursion into space-time."

"So it wasn't the locals." Yuuno confirmed.

"That was their conclusion as well." Fate agreed. "Shortly after, PFC Lanster detected an anomalous magic residual and identified it as possibly eminating from a person of interest."

"The culprit?" Yuuno asked.

"We don't know. She was essentially grasping at straws by that point." Fate shook her head. "But, while apprehending the POI for questioning, with backup from Corporal Nakajima, an associate of the POI using Mid-styled magic inflicted severe wounds on both of them." Fate shook her head. "I was called in to take charge of the investigation while PFC Lanster recovers in the hospital, and Corporal Nakajima hasn't been released back to active duty yet, either."

Silence.

Fate sighed. "So far the POI has demonstrated no magic potential. But his associate is a high-speed Striker that uses a sword-type device named "Flamberge" with the Mid-Childan system."

"Armed, and extremely dangerous." Yuuno muttered.

"Yes." Fate agreed. "Any data you can dig up what be greatly appreciated."

"I'll see what I can do..." Yuuno sighed.

"Thank you, Yuuno." Fate finished.

"Give my best to Teana and Subaru." Yuuno added.

"I will." Fate nodded, and signed out, the videograph blanking out.

Hilux frowned. "Jetter... didn't they just finish up a big intraplanet war?"

Yuuno nodded absently. "Yes. They're a remnant civilization that was lost in the post-Belkan chaos."

"They're rated at two on the ignorance spectrum, right?" Prison asked.

The five point "ignorance spectrum": five for a civilization with complete knowledge of the existence of TSAB, and one for a society that believes it's the sole human civilization. With a rank of two, the existence of extra-planetary civilization is a secret inside their culture known only to a cabal.

"Wouldn't they be a three?" Hilux disagreed.

Three: a civilization that is evenly split, possessing fragmented or contradictory evidence, that is divided and does not possess consensus regarding the existence of extra-planetary civilizations.

"According to Hofstrom's formulation, a one. According to Konno's, a three." Yuuno announced.

Hofstrom's formulation is a population-weighted statistical measurement where each score on the scale is a "ceiling" of incremental 20% believers; Konno's formulation measures the score as a function of GDP involved with extra-planetary action. For a world like Jetter, where knowledge of other planetary civilizations is suppressed by a ruling political class that is struggling, in secret, to develop technological parity with the TSAB, Yuuno's distinction is correct.

The "ignorance score" is not a popular tool within the TSAB for assessing possible client planets because there is no academic consensus on what the scores actually mean: the intended ease of a simple five-point metric was completely compromised by the opacity of the decision rules and continuous academic argument.

Yuuno paused, considering. "Actually," he said, looking down at the two, "let's make this a test of your abilities with search magic."

"Hilux, research Jetter." Yuuno ordered. "Collect theories for why it was the incursion site; if they're just coincidental, that's fine, but rule everything out. Start with Lost Logia associated with Jetter; that's a depressingly common answer to how planet-local apocalypses start up."

Hilux nodded. "Yes sir."

"Prison," Yuuno continued, "see if you can identify this Striker with the sword."

"Certainly." Prison agreed. "But, is it all right to delegate such important research to us?"

Yuuno smiled, a trifle shy. "Um, actually, I'm going to compare how far you can get to what I'll dig up myself. That's what makes it a test."

"You're pretty confident in your search magic." Hilux not-quite-accused.

"I do okay." Yuuno admitted.

I I I

The ragged vagrant floated across the midnight sky. The carbon-heavy clouds of Jetter, laden with smogs, blotted out the stars and moons, casting everything in pitch darkness.

Very carefully, the vagrant regulated his magical power as low as possible; any more than a trickle and they could be detected by the magiteck of the TSAB. Likewise, too much speed would give them away. Even if they were going to perform one desperate last stand, haste would avail them nothing at that junction.

The vagrant's shape was unnatural.

Slung over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, was his companion, the anachronism. He was like a sack resting solidly on the other man's shoulders.

Their coats-the poncho-like rags of the vagrant and the tattered duster of the anachronism-fluttered like half-hearted banners behind them as the drifted through the air.

The anachronism was clutching his ancient top-hat to his head with his left hand, preventing it from blowing away in the intermittent winds.

The anachronism opened his mouth.

"I'm not going to drop you." The vagrant said.

The anachronism nodded.

I I I

Fate Testarossa smoothed her skirt and lowered herself into the chair.
Subaru Nakajima did not even blink. Without even noticing that a superior officer was seated beside her, from hooded eyes, she continued to brood over her wounded friend. She didn't notice anything, like she didn't recognize anything.

No, that is not true. Because Subaru spoke, addressing the blond woman beside her.

"I couldn't…" Subaru began, voice low, tense, and distraught. "I couldn't protect her."

"She is alive." Fate quietly said.

"That's not enough!" Subaru fiercy rebutted, fists clenching between her knees. "Teana got hurt because of me, because I wasn't fast enough, wasn't good enough! I couldn't save her!"

That self-recrimination hung in the air.

"Nanoha got hurt once." Fate quietly said. "She pushed herself too hard. She was exhausted, and made a mistake. Then, she was harmed."

Subaru shifted.

"I remember feeling the same way you did." Fate continued. "Sitting in that same chair, looking down at a friend bandaged the same way in that same white hospital bed."

"But you know what?"

Subaru grunted.

"When I said those same things to her, I felt worse, because then Nanoha had a look on her face like she'd been wounded all over again."

Subaru flinched.

"I'm not going to say something like, 'It couldn't be helped' or 'You did your best' or even 'Sometimes things just go wrong', because even if your head knows they're true, your heart won't believe." Fate sighed. "But, right now, being strong for your friend means not blaming yourself. It means smiling and supporting them, because Teana will also be blaming herself for getting hurt, and you don't want her to suffer more because she sees you, her friend, suffering, right?"

Subaru said nothing. Finally, she nodded, a heavy motion like her spine was filled with lead.

Fate stood, patting Subaru on the shoulder. "So, rather than putting on a heavy scowl, the first thing Teana needs to see when she wakes up is your relieved smile, ok?"

"Yes sir." Subaru said, with a heavy sigh.

"As long as you understand." Fate said, smiling. "Now, I have to go take care of some other things." Fate stood, absently brushing her skirt smooth on her thighs.

"Right." Subaru grunted.

As the door opened before Fate, Subaru spoke again.

"Testarossa-san." Subaru said, without looking up, without looking back.
"Thank you."

Fate smiled. "You're welcome."

She stepped through the door, and it slid shut behind her.

In the hall outside sick bay, Fate took a deep breath, and released it in a heavy sigh.

Then, she gestured with a flick of her hand, even as she turned to walk down the hall. Her holographic interface lit up beside her. "You paged me?"
Bridge communication officer Lucino Lillie saluted over the comm channel.

"Sir!" At Fate's nod, she released the salute. "We've triangulated the signature of the residual magical waveform that was recorded by Cross Mirage. It's more like a fading echo than a mage's signature, though."

Fate frowned. "So it's not the mage signature of the target?"

Lucino shook her head. "It doesn't appear that way."

"If it's just ringdown noise from a dimensional incursion…" Fate shook her head, half-amazed and half-appalled.

"We're moving into position over them now." Lucino continued.

Fate cocked her head to the side. "You mean they're not over the capital anymore?"

Lucino shook her head. "Unauthorized flight. The accomplice has already been tentatively tagged an A-rank mage."

"Were are they headed?" Fate said.

Lucino double-checked her computer. "According to these projections… they're moving in a straight line towards a geographic feature called 'Salt Bay' on the maps that were provided by the Dictatum."

Fate frowned. "I will prepare to deploy… let me know when we are in range for teleportation."

Lucino saluted. "Yes sir!" With that, she cut the link, and the holographic square floating beside Fate's head dispersed into nothingness.

Walking along the hallway, Fate allowed her thoughts to circle in worry.

Dimensional incursion—an event where an asymptote was created in the curvature of space-time. From a literal perspective, it created a position of theoretically infinite potential energy. Time travel or truly instantaneous movement became possible. Of course, rather than being used, such an event could simply be collapsed, releasing all that potential explosively. There was an upper limit to the effect, but destroying a planet was within that limit.

Fortunately, forcing the curvature of space-time away from steady state was fiendishly hard. It took the resources of an entire world-government to pull together the experimental technology required to create even a marginally stable quasi-incursion. That was why the TSAB had interdicted the Dictat that ruled Jetter—they were the best suspect.

But, against all common sense, it looked like the incursion had just two authors, just two scruffy wanderers without any links to the TSAB or the world they were on—two hobos, essentially. That was what Fate's instincts as an Enforcer were telling her those two were. Two marginal mages that snuck between worlds at the outskirts of the TSAB.

But their deeds did not match that profile.

The motives and purposes of these two vagabonds were totally unknown. There capabilities and capacities were only partially known. One was the only detected link to a dimensional incursion, an event of such serious danger that the TSAB was authorized to take any measures, no matter how extreme, to prevent or seal them—even if it meant going to war with an Unadministered World such as Jetter, no one on the council would even blink, if it was necessary to solve an incursion.

I I I

"That's odd…" Yuuno said, frowning at the hologram. Finally, he shook his head.

"What is it?" Arf asked.

Yuuno sighed, and took off his glasses to absently rub them clean as he glanced over his shoulder at the red-haired familiar. "There are a couple references to a device named "Flamberge", but all the links have been cut and all the identifying information has been redacted."

Arf frowned. "A cover up?"

Yuuno shook his head. "No, it's not trying to hide anything. This is a pretty straightforward example of something just getting buried under a top-secret classification. Well, with one major oddity."

Arf waited for Yuuno to continue.

He obliged. "There's no agency. Usually, in a military database like the Infinite Library has become, if something is classified, it's under a specified authority—so you know who to ask if you really do need to know, and you know to stop looking if you don't." Yuuno grunted, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "But, the metadata of who classified the data and when, that's all been completely removed, if it was ever there in the first place."

Arf scowled at that, crossing her arms. "So it's a dead end?"

Yuuno began to shake his head, and then paused, considering. "Well… kind of. We can't just trace the name "Flamberge" back to the owner or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure this device was registered under a TSAB officer about forty years ago."

Arf blinked, surprised. "You mean... a deserter?"

Yuuno shrugged. "Or it was scavenged somehow. I won't know anything about how the current user compares to the original owner until I've at least got some data about the latter."

He sighed. "Anyway, it's been a while… I should probably check up on my students, and then report what we've found to Fate."

I I I

Fate Testarossa hung in the sky. Waves crashed mutely on the shore behind and below her. The breeze was alive with the salt scent of the ocean.

Too late.

This thing… was obviously a Lost Logia.

Her eye twitched, and the holographic panel lit up beside her, indicating she had an incoming comm call. "Patch it through, please." She requested.

"Yes sir." Bardiche intoned, linking with ship node to send a wave communication from the Jetter airspace to the Infinite Library.

"Yuuno." She greeted.

"Fate." He replied, smiling. "I thought I would fill you in on what we've found out."

Behind him, the student in the black sut—Hilux, Fate recalled—was leaning over Yuuno's shoulder, angling himself slightly absurdly to get a better angle to look through the holographic camera.

"It's brighter than I expected." Hilux commented.

"Oh?" Prison queried, eyebrow raised.

Hilux frowned, and gestured at the vast cube that hung in the sky. "Well, you know." Hilux paused. "Because it's red, it always got compared to blood whenever people wrote about it. But this is more like, fire-engine red."

"I think that had more to do with how many people it's killed." Prison rebutted.

"Oh please." Hilux said, rolling his eyes. "This murder-puzzle has only killed like, an eighth as many people as the Forbidden Zone. And nobody compared the Forbidden Zone to blood."

"The Forbidden Zone doesn't spit mangled corpses out." Prison countered. "It just obliterates trespassers' souls."

Yuuno coughed. "Perhaps you should include Fate-san in this conversation?"

Hilux grinned, slightly guilty. "Oh, right. That's the Blood Cube—or the Red Box, or the Crimson Cube, or the Puzzle Box, or a dozen other nicknames because nobody knows who built it for sure so there isn't a proper name for it." He shrugged. "It's basically harmless, so it just hasn't been a priority for Lost Logia researchers. Keeps getting pushed behind more problematic stuff."

"You just said it kills people." Fate pointed out, voice to mild to really be called disagreement.

"Well, yes, that's true," Hilux said, "but only people that ask for it. If you don't climb inside, it's harmless."

Fate glanced at it, contemplating it for a moment. "And what happens if, as you say… someone does climb inside?"

Hilux glanced at Prison, who shrugged.

"You solve math puzzles until it kills you." Hilux said.

Fate blinked. "What do you mean?"

Hilux considered. "Okay, so, this thing, this Blood Cube, is a big red cube with a square hole in the bottom. If you go through the hole, there's a visual representation of a math problem, with multiple choices. If you pick the right answer, a door opens. If you go through the door, it closes behind you. Or you can go back through the door you came in from and backtrack until you leave the Cube. But if you do go through that next door, there's another puzzle in the next room, and it's a little harder. Everyone has either given up or… well, their mangled, torn-up corpse is found floating in the bay. Apparently the punishment for wrong answers is severe." Hilux shrugged. "But it doesn't abduct people or blot out the sun or pour monsters into the sea, so compared to a stereotypical Lost Logia, if there is such a thing, this Blood Cube is harmless."

Fate considered the Blood Cube for a longer moment.

A perfect cube, suspended in the sky above the rolling waters of Salt Bay, a crescent-shaped curve of coastline with a long, sloping beach that had once supported salt-making as a major industry of the substance-farming peasants that had lived here before mining had rendered it obsolete.

The cube itself was clearly artificial. It was perfectly smooth and flat, with an extremely uniform surface that had over the long centuries resisted all attempts to carve out a sample. Every surface was, without exception, bright red.

Although it cast a shadow on the waters before it, it was exactly the same color of red no matter which direction it was observed from. The effect was dizzying; it had the appearance of a badly-done illusion, a cube of color simply imposed on your field of view without any regard for sunlight.

But it was real.

And, apparently, deadly.

On the bottom surface, in exactly the center of that side, there was a door, an aperture. Anyone could step through.

Inside was a room, also exactly cubical.

The Red Cube-the Blood Box-was the most famous Lost Logia on the backwater planet of Jetter, an enigma that had sat inert for a very long time. But, because it was inert, because the Dictat was only grudgingly cooperating, this dangerous-yet-harmless thing had not been mentioned to the Enforcers by any of the locals.

In all the centuries since the Fall of Al Hazred, the beginning of TSAB's recorded history, not once had someone completed the Cube's puzzles. Very few had even tried across the centuries.

Fate frowned. "Why would anyone even enter this thing."

Prison smiled blandly. "Why for the treasure of course."

"Treasure?" Fate asked.

Hilux sighed. "Well, it's not really a fortress mean to hold something in protection until it's needed, and it's not really a prize in itself, but it's obviously a puzzle, obviously a challenge. So, people are confident that there's a reward for solving the puzzle, a prize for completing the challenge." Hilux vigorously raised a finger. "But! That's conjecture. There is not even one reliable indication of who built it, let alone why, so the idea it contains a treasure is simply a hypothesis based on human psychology."

"It could be trolling." Prison added.

"A possibility," Hilux allowed, "And considering what we know of Al Hazred, maybe even the likeliest possibility." Hilux sighed. "Anyway, since testing the hypothesis 'the Blood Cube contains a treasure' has cost the lives of everyone that's tried to test it, eventually people kinda… gave up."

"That is not entirely true." Yuuno quietly said.

"Eh?"

Yuuno sighed, rubbing his neck. "Although the builder is still unknown, certain classified documents predating the First King War indicate that it was built on commission."

Prison frowned. "Are you saying… you know who had it built?"

"Yes." Yuuno sighed, closing his eyes. "A famous arithmetician and alchemist from that era."

"No." Hilux said, shaking his head. "Don't, just no, I don't wanna hear this."

Prison smiled, his eyes wide. "Dr. Scrya, are you seriously implying…"

Fate pursed her lips, unsure at the sudden mood that had overtaken the librarians.

"Yes." Yuuno said, opening his eyes, meeting the gaze of each of his pupils, before turning to make eye contact with Fate. "Abdul of Al Hazred."