She learned three things today.
One, she was awful at taking photos of anything that didn't feel like staying still. Two, trying to lure seagulls to her with those pink confectionery was a terrible, terrible idea. Three, she wouldn't be free of this Living Books Dimension any time in the foreseeable future.
"You look sadder than before." Brøø patted her on the shoulder, as she sat up from the book piles. "Is there anything wrong?"
"How do I go back to sleep—normal sleep," she said in her most tired voice. "And never come here again?"
"Simple. You just fall asleep in this place, and you'll wake up on your bed! I dunno about the second one."
With a sigh, she lay back down. The covers and spines of books kept jabbing against her body, no matter which spot she had rolled onto. Brøø had disappeared behind a nearby hill, but she could still hear the girl humming.
After a while, the boredom became unbearable. Finally, she raised her head a little, still lying on her stomach. "You don't happen to know anything about Lowee's native wildlife and where to find them, do you?"
"Nope! I just learned karate there." Brøø made a chopping gesture with her hands.
"Why did the books explode last time."
"No idea. I've never seen that happen before," Brøø replied. "But I checked out that floaty book while you were gone. There're so many missing pages! It must've turned blue for quite a while."
"What?"
"Blue books belong to dead people. Red means you can't remember new things anymore. Green is like, all alive and well. But people like us—" she pointed to the crowns on her head, "—have our books all nested in here, safe and sound!"
"Like us? Are we actually related?" She didn't remember having a twin living in that castle. Which was a good thing. Brøø must have grown up under the care of more sane and responsible parents, compared to her...guardians.
"Oh, everyone here is related! All these shadow people could be our uncles and aunts and great-grandparents. Can you believe I used to call them "Grues' and 'Bungelings'?"
That sounded exactly like the kind of nicknames Brøø would come up with. "They don't look happy to be reunited with me. Just saying."
"Well, they can't recognize us anymore," Brøø said. "It's sad, really. They've lost all their pages after dying in here, and are just trying to take ours so they can exist again."
Great. She was definitely not going to fall asleep after hearing that.
She sat up and pulled out the piece of blue paper from her sash. Strange, how her clothes never seemed to change in this place. "So, I have this thing. Didn't you say something about pages last time?"
"Ah-ha! It's from the floaty book. I've found one too." Brøø's eyes lit up when she saw the symbols on the paper. Then, she reached into the pocket of her pants. Only then did she notice several books on Brøø's back, all rolled up and strapped onto a belt.
"Wanna exchange—?" Brøø held up the other piece of paper, before seeing her blank stare. "Oh. I forget you can't see what's in there. But maybe if we put them back into the book together, you'd get invited?"
"I have no idea of what you're talking about, but I'm not going to start attacking people in my sleep if I...go through that again, right?"
With how sturdy those automated room doors were, she couldn't possibly get into the other bedroom on this level by accident. But the very mental image of her hands tightening around Primo's throat made her sick to her stomach.
"I dunno. You've touched some super weird stuff, and it's not a pretty orb." Brøø said. "But you don't have to if you don't want to, okay? We can just stay here and talk."
Once again, she had no idea what Brøø was saying. But one thing was clear: sleep was not coming to her in this place. After a long silence, she finally stood up and walked towards Brøø.
"Okay. Let's do this, and hope that I'm not going to regret it later."
At least if she started dream-walking tonight, she'd know to tie herself to the bed in advance tomorrow.
—She let out a cheer, as the red Duckdragon stumbled around the cavern, with a dagger stuck in its eyes. Behind her, another fist projectile shot towards its head.
The attack connected with the beast's snout. It let out a strange quacking sound, before collapsing onto the cave floor. Right at that moment, a familiar shadow swept down from the ceiling.
When the dust cleared, the dead Duckdragon was still lying there, but the dagger was gone.
"Really?!" She groaned.
"Uh, can't you just summon it back later? You still have Tommy." Ubi pointed to the remaining dagger in her hand.
"I'm not leaving Jerry to that stupid bat!" Now that she said it out loud, the nicknames she gave to her daggers did sound a little embarrassing. "And I'm done with it stealing our stuff. Let's show it who's the real badass here!"
She sprinted out of the large cave, almost face-planting on the wet rocks in her hurry. Luckily, the wetness had turned all the dust into mud, and she was no longer wrapping a cloth around her face like some shady villain. The bat, however, was better at navigating in these twisty little passages than both of them. They soon lost sight of the creature and stopped at a junction.
"Hey! Bat! Here's a thing Ubi dug out of a wall! Take this trash and give my dagger back!" She waved her arms in the darkness, holding the unnaturally cubical rock up high in the air. There was no response, however. Huffing, she sat back down.
"I like that rock, y'know." Ubi said. "Won't your sis be worried if you spent too long in here?"
She turned back, mouth agape. "You still don't get it? She doesn't know we're here! She'd be losing her mind if she ever found out!"
"Uh, you just dragged me along, and said something about the most secret place in Tari, being a badass, dragons, blah blah blah."
"What, you think we're having a picnic in these caves, and the dragons get in the way?"
"We are? Aww. I forget to bring food."
"No!" She groaned. "Are you really this dense? We're here on a secret mission! To slay the evil dragons that dare to mess up Lady Cyan Heart's sanctuary!"
"But they aren't destroying anything? They'd been doing their own stuff till we came along." Ubi gave her a curious glance. "You just wanna know what's in these caves, right?"
"Yeah. Kinda." She mumbled, after a long silence. Was she really this easy to read?
"Sis keeps telling me 'oh, it's too dangerous for you' and 'I can read you another history book'. Guess what? I can kick some dragon butts just alright, and I'm done with hearing the same story over and over again."
"The Lady Cyan Heart story?" Ubi made a funny face, as she eyed the rows of reliefs on the surrounding cave walls. "Isn't she like, all over the place in your home? You still haven't seen enough of her? She creeps me out a little, really."
"That's just her badass aura! The point is, this cave is where the old Basilicom used to be, before the Great Shock happened. I bet she had left some secret message or powerful weapon for her successors, and it's just lying somewhere, waiting to be found by the right person." She raised her fists into the air. "It's gonna be super awesome, and we'll make Tari just as huge and great as before, and sis won't be so stressed out all the time—"
"Uh, hello?"
"What?" She frowned at the pat on her shoulder.
"The bat. It just flew over your head, and went that way."
She quickly stood up and started glancing around, but apart from the sound of flapping wings, there was no sign of the bat.
"Why don't you hit it?!"
Ubi pointed to the cluster of thin stalactites hanging on the ceiling. Only a single shot from her glove was enough for the whole thing to come crashing down on their heads, even if it didn't miss the bat.
"Ugh, fine!" She groaned and started running again. The moisture in the cavern soon coalesced into waves of rolling mist, and the light from Ubi's glove was vanishing into the vast grayness beyond. It took several rounds of frustrated wandering and backtracking out of dead ends before the sound of flapping wings made its way into her ears again.
"That way!"
Following the sound, they soon emerged into another cavern, where the walls were stained a metallic yellow. She grinned. No other branching paths, just a straight road leading to a dead end. The bat wouldn't be able to lose them in here, and...
"Take! The! Rock!"
The moment she caught sight of the shadow hanging on the ceiling, she reached into her pocket and hurled the rock towards it. The giant bat did not take an interest in this object, however. The rock missed, flying straight into the cave wall. With a strange beeping sound, the entire wall crumbled into a bunch of pixels, revealing the hollow space behind it.
"W-W-What?" She opened her mouth, "Did the wall just..."
"Ohh. Secret passage."
While they were still staring, the bat had already fled into the passage, but with this new discovery, she was less keen on getting even with the bat. "Ha! I told you! Let's go see what's in there."
"Won't it be funny if it's some random guy's signature?" Ubi made a stroke with her finger. "Just to let people know they've been there?"
"No! It has to be something more important!"
"I'd totally do that if I found an empty secret room."
Ignoring Ubi's stray musing, she dashed into the passage. The mist became thicker, enough to completely obscure the ground below, but she kept running. Only when her forehead banged against a hard solid surface did she reel back and come to a halt.
She was about to yell some really mean things when Ubi came closer. Under the faint glow of her glove, she saw the giant structure that towered over them.
It was the very top of a building's dome. Most of the tiles and glass panes had crumbled away, leaving only the rusty metal frames behind. But even the portion that remained above ground was tall, taller than the tallest dome in Tari's new Basilicom. Its tip stabbed into the cavern's ceiling like a giant spear, and a thick layer of mud engulfed its base. Perhaps it was still sinking, deeper and deeper into the earth, at a speed too slow for her eyes to see.
For a moment, they just stood there in dead silence, staring at the structure, until the sounds of a sharp object scratching against metal erupted out of the darkness. It went on and off in a dissonant rhythm, punctuated only by their own frantic heartbeats.
She felt a forceful tug on her sleeves. But she did not turn back. Step by step, she made her way towards the origin point of the noise, where the metal frames were touching the wall.
"Rei...Rei...Ryghts..."
A faint whisper came through the darkness. Around them, a sudden gust of wind swept the thick mist away.
"Cyan Heart..." The voice suddenly burst into a shrill shriek. "It's all your fault!"
"Swallowed into the earth...everyone's gone, just like that."
The moment the voice fell silent, the scratching noises became louder. Tiny sparks flickered across the metal frame with each piercing scratch.
"Our Sharecite is falling apart. What have I done...to deserve this? I don't want to die, not so soon...not as Tari's last Goddess..."
She pressed her palms against the frames and looked up. The voice deteriorated into incoherent sobbing, then heavy panting, while the wind swirled around them, growing stronger with each passing second. A small hand clutched onto her shoulder from behind, before Ubi's glove rose over her head, illuminating the space in front of them.
There were deep, jagged marks on the metal frames. More were struck into the surface with each burst of sparks, as if someone was carving on the metal with an invisible blade. Right at that moment, a realization came to her.
These marks were not random scribbles. They were forming giant letters.
"Why am I still here? W-What is...my name? " The voice stuttered, "P-Pa...Pam..."
"Pamola." They read the letters out in unison.
Slowly, the howling wind faded away. There was a faint, childlike laugh, before the breathing sounds disappeared.
After staring into the darkness for who knew how long, she finally turned away from the remnant of the building. "Let's get out of here."
She started making her way out of the passage, without sparing a glance at her companion, but Ubi soon caught up to her and patted her on the back.
"Wait. I need to ask you something." There was a rare hesitance in her tone. "You keep saying you wanna become just like Lady Cyan Heart. Why?"
"What kind of stupid question is that? S-She's the biggest badass ever! She fought the First Goddess and won, she made Tari into the greatest nation, she—"
"Are you gonna sink everything into the earth too?" A pause. "I think that'll make you a terrible CPU."
"Hey! Just because Lady Cyan Heart made this one huge mistake doesn't mean she's a complete monster! She had done a lot of great things for her people—" She took a deep breath, "—and was trying to defend Tari from all those traitors and nasty neighbors when she tried to lift the nation into the air. She didn't know it would fail!"
"Okay, so she didn't mean to kill so many people. But if you, like, throw Tommy at the bat and hit me by accident, doesn't it still hurt?"
"I..." She bit into her lip. She wanted to retort, to deliver a grand speech in defense of Tari's honor, but the righteous fury was just not there anymore. "Shut up."
"Why?"
"I say SHUT UP! You're just a stupid kid who knows nothing about her!"
"And you don't know any better than me." Ubi stared back. "If you did, you wouldn't start throwing a tantrum, just 'cause I asked a question you can't answer."
She didn't say anything. She just went on a mad dash, out of the narrow passage, away from Ubi and the heat that was swelling up in her chest. The reliefs on the cave walls glared at her with their lifeless stone eyes as she ran past them, before disappearing into the thick mist in the distance, freeing her from their accusing looks. When she exited the mist, she was standing inside an unfamiliar cavern.
Moisture seeped into her hair as she walked further down the branching paths, and she was shivering from the chill after several rounds of aimless wandering. Finally, she sat down on the ground.
Ubi's question hurt, and she didn't want to think about how right it sounded.
She was lost. Hopelessly lost. If she wandered around this place for too long, maybe her sister would come and take her home. How embarrassing.
Had her sister ever heard that voice? Had the CPU before her ever found out about that secret passage? She ordered the people to carve all these statues into the cavern walls, after all.
Maybe they did. Maybe they were the ones that sealed it up.
She sniffled a little and buried her face in her arms. After what seemed like an eternity of silence, light footsteps came through the darkness. Before long, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
"You shouldn't have run off like that." Ubi paused. "Not when you can't find your way back."
"Sorry for yelling," she muttered. "It's just...I should love Lady Cyan Heart. But sometimes, I can't help but hate her a little."
"Oh?"
"Because sis thinks she's so perfect and badass. She wants me to become just like her, even if she's not saying it out loud." She lowered her head. "But...maybe I can't. Maybe she's wrong, and she's been wasting her time on me, and I'll end up disappointing her? Or maybe you're right, and I'm gonna become a terrible CPU. Just like her."
"No. You won't." Ubi's voice sounded really serious all of a sudden. "Yeah, you can be kinda mean, but maybe you've been a little too hard on yourself."
"I have to! Sooner or later, I'll go off and fight against...them. The CPUs of Planeptune and Lowee, t-they are meaner and scarier than the biggest monsters you've ever met. One of them killed sis's big sister, and she's still terribly sad over it."
"Seeing Lady Cyan Heart's face everywhere, it just makes me..." She gritted her teeth. "She's been gone for centuries, but it's like she never leaves us at all. And I'm so sick of her."
"What you just said to me. Have you ever told your sis about these feelings?"
"Are you nuts?! She'd think she must've done something wrong, and now I was mad at her! Then she'd keep saying sorry and be extra nice to me, and..."
She closed her eyes, and her sister was there again. Picking up the pieces of that statue she destroyed. Saying how it must've been an accident and she didn't really hate Lady Cyan Heart and then there were no words. Just ugly sobbing.
"It's awful. I don't wanna do that to her again."
"Uh. I dunno how to put this." Ubi said. "You remember what I said about throwing daggers at a bat and hitting the wrong thing? I think that's what she's been doing to you. She never wished to hurt you, but you still got all messed up in the end."
"So what?"
"You gotta' speak up and let her know."
"No way."
"I'm not saying you should do it right away. But...promise me that you'd try, please? I don't want you to keep getting mad at me and everyone else, just 'cause you can't get mad at her."
After a long silence, she made a small nod.