If she was going to be honest with herself, she had never, ever wanted to see this place again.
Mirai glanced out from behind a shining blue pillar. The crystal felt cold under her palms. Too cold. Too distant. She frowned at the faraway frozen sky with its frozen aurora. There was no ripple to it, not the way that it moved back on earth. The Astral always prided themselves on their eternal light from the glowing sky, claiming that the aurora in the human realm was inadequate. Why, one didn't even know when it might appear! It was chaotic and uncertain and you couldn't be certain when you would be able see it next. Here, you could see it every day!
She sighed to herself. Old codgers. Every one of them. Everything had to be just so in their little world. Everything had to be perfect.
Tsukumo Mirai hated perfect.
She peeled herself off of the cold pillar and made her way down the long, empty walkway.
It was precisely midnight in Astral time. Another thing they were obsessed with—time. She couldn't count how many stardials she had seen, one between at least every other pillar, if not every pillar. How many clocks did one really need? And all of them were attuned just perfectly to each other, the little glimmering sparkles hovering over the appropriate number, moving almost imperceptibly forward at the exact same rate. Plodding ever onward, always marking off every moment and watching every second. Could one even consider a world that had no rotation, no orbit, to have time? It was ridiculous.
Midnight was the time that everyone was supposed to be in their homes. Well, technically the curfew was actually nine o'clock (ridiculous) but midnight was more so. Even in a realm that was eternally twilight, there was a strange desire to avoid the night. Dark things roamed in the hours meant to be nighttime, the Astral believed. Dark, chaotic, unpredictable things. And heaven forbid anything at all be unpredictable.
Mirai rolled her eyes in spite of herself as she hurried down the perfectly kept, perfectly flat crystal road, of just the absolute perfect consistency so that you wouldn't slip and slide on it like ice, but it still shone with a perfect reflection of the sky above.
Not that there's anything to reflect, she thought with almost a childlike petulance. There's no stars here...not anymore.
The stars had been "too chaotic" and it was "too much work" to put in the effort of reorganizing them and putting them into rows, so the elders had apparently decided to block them out entirely with an Astral veil. Now the only light in the sky came from the frozen aurora, caught and held there with ancient light harnessing techniques.
Mirai checked the time in a passing stardial. Twelve o' five. She had plenty of time. Ena might be an Astral but they, at least, had little use for the idea of time. Why should such beings as old as they take stock in time, they had said once. After all, time was an illusion created to understand the passing moments. And after living so long, it should cease to make a difference. A minute is just as long as a day if you don't know the time.
"Although you always were over-dramatic about everything when you were trying to explain yourself for being late," she said out loud to the pillars ahead, in response to the memory that was floating through both of their heads.
There was a soft laugh, and Mirai had to smile. From behind one of the pillars, an Astral appeared. They were the same height as Mirai, the same shape, with the same hair style, long and flowing down the back with the single strand floating between their eyes, the same face in shape and arrangement. But the similarities stopped there. Ena was an Astral in their pure form, glowing, their skin a soft blue, their hair a dazzling white that floated about them like they were standing underwater. Their eyes were a pale, glowing platinum blue, pupil-less, perhaps flat and unfeeling looking to someone that didn't understand an Astral's face the way that Mirai did.
She had been one herself for a while, after all.
She grinned as she gave her sister an overpowering, smothering hug.
"Oof! You're going to shatter me like glass," Ena said, laughing.
"Aw, Astral are tougher than that, and you and I know it—otherwise, I would have shattered ages ago. Did I tell you I fell off Mt. Everest?"
"You did what?"
Mirai laughed—Ena had always been the overprotective type, and judging by the way their hands were flailing now and their face was puffing up in indignation, they hadn't changed.
"It wasn't too much of a fall—Kazuma caught me, anyway," Mirai said with a laugh, tossing her orange hair across her back.
Ena shook their head, putting their hands on their hips.
"Just because you're an Astral and you heal faster than humans, doesn't mean you should be thrill seeking willy-nilly—you can still die, you know. And then who knows what will happen to you, or where you'll go."
"But then who will be there to tease you?" Mirai said as she slung her arm over Ena's shoulder with a laugh.
Ena laughed softly themselves, and then their eyes glanced nervously up towards the towering crystal city.
"We should try to keep it down," they said. "We may be outside city limits, but Eliphas' guard units sometimes come this far to check."
"Even at midnight?" Mirai said.
Ena nodded.
"Eliphas is starting to lose their fear of the night hours. And the guards...none of them are Astral."
Mirai frowned, her eyes narrowing.
"Eliphas has started using the homunculi?"
Ena nodded.
"Soulless they may be, but they make good soldiers with the right programming...and there's no risk of losing an Astral if a fight breaks out."
Mirai's jaw clenched.
"Using those old things...they should be careful. I don't think they're at all stable."
"They're not. And there's not many of them, so the Council has taken to making more."
"What?"
"That's what I said...but the rest of the people seem all for it..."
Both trailed off, eyes lifting up to the city.
"It's up there, isn't it?" Mirai whispered, her eyes fixing on the single tallest building with the bulge towards the top where the Empty Throne sat. "Astral-99. It's almost ready to be activated."
Ena nodded.
"War is very nearly upon us," they whispered. "Already there have been fights at the borders between our worlds."
"They're fraying enough to allow people through?"
Ena nodded, their eyes dropping to the ground with nerves. Mirai's fists rolled up.
"Then we don't have any time to lose. Where is the program?"
Ena glanced both ways to make doubly certain they were entirely alone. Then they beckoned to their sister, taking Mirai's hand and leading her down the crystal path...and then off of it.
Mirai sighed with contentment as her boots sank into the loamy soil. The city and the structures of the Astral World were stuffy as hell, and everything was trying so hard to be in order. The wilderness, though...that was where she came alive.
The grasses blew in a gentle breeze, tickling her with their soft, cerulean blue blades. Even the Astral hadn't yet figured out how to control the flow of wind, so it came and went where it pleased. The soil was soft and springy beneath their feet as they headed for the smudge of hills in the distance, a dark shimmering blue like the crests of waves blending into the blue-black sky. Mirai knew from experience that there was a network of crystal caves down there, each one home to a vast cavern full of glowing, beautiful crystals in every shade imaginable, and some that were not imaginable. Exploring them had been one of the reasons she had eventually been kicked out of the Astral World. Well, that and having intimate relations with a human, which was grounds enough for execution. She had only barely escaped that...and here she was again, back in her old hometown, right where she had been slated to be killed before she had escaped.
If she was found, those old bastards on the council would probably have her killed on sight.
Her childlike arrogance faded then, though. Because she remembered why she was here again. Why she had come back home.
This was all in danger of disappearing forever. And as much as she had hated living here...as much as the hundreds of years she had spent here had made her hate herself, and the world, and everything, as much as she had felt trapped and lost and dying in this stuffy, rule-oriented world...she didn't want it to disappear. She didn't want it and everyone in it to die.
She had to protect it with everything she had.
Ena led them to the base of the hills and then around the mounds until they found a cavern opening up at the very base. It was hardly big enough to fit a single person.
Ena went first, wedging themself into the hole and disappearing down it.
"It gets wider," they called back. "Just drop down."
Mirai hadn't hesitated at all, though, and was already shoving herself feet first into the hole. It took a few seconds to pop her hips through but after that she slipped right in, dropping to the bottom of a dark dirt hole. Scatters of dirt fell around her and into her hair as she stood upright—it was tall enough for that, but just barely.
Ena waited, holding an orb of light in their hand. They frowned and reached out to brush the dirt out of Mirai's hair, smoothing it out and laying it back down over her shoulders.
"Do we really have time for that?" Mirai said, blushing at being treated like she was a twenty year old again.
Ena shook their head, smiling sadly.
"I've...missed you," they whispered. Their fingers lingered on Mirai's shoulder for a moment. "I've really...missed you."
Mirai's heart panged at the sound of sorrow in her sister's voice, the longing, the barely constrained tears that wanted to spill out.
"En...I'm...I'm sorry..."
Ena drew back, curling her hand against her chest.
"N-no, I'm sorry, you're right, we don't have time for this..."
Mirai caught her before she got away, wrapping her in a tight embrace.
"I'm here now, En," she whispered. "I'm here now..."
Ena trembled under Mirai's grip, and she gripped both hands to Mirai's arms, letting the orb of light float to the ceiling.
"I just—I keep replaying your trial over and over in my head and I just keep thinking that if I had done something, if I had kept you from leaving that day to go see him, they never would have found out about you and Kazuma and I wouldn't have had to see you almost die—"
"Sh, sh, it's okay...it's not your fault, En...it's not your fault..."
She stroked her hand through Ena's hair, the way she had done when they were both children.
"You're such a crybaby," Mirai whispered, tightening her grip on her sister.
"You do this to me, you know," Ena sniffled, but they were almost laughing. "Always getting yourself into trouble. Always making things difficult for me. Always getting me into trouble when you fall off a building and get hurt."
"That was one time."
They both laughed softly, holding each other in that darkness. Years. It had been years since they had seen each other. Mirai pressed her forehead to Ena's. Ena opened up a memory to her and they shared it together for a moment. The one time that they had been able to meet after Mirai had escaped to the Astral World. The brief moment they had had peering through opposite mirrors, Mirai showing off a one-year-old Akari in her footie blue pajamas that she had picked out herself. Ena had laughed at how strange the pajamas looked with their cartoon buckets with googly eyes—who decided that it should be buckets of all things? Humans came up with the funniest ideas!
The memory faded slowly. Their embrace faded even slower, drawing back from each other, still holding each other's hands.
"Let's fix this," Mirai said. "All of this. Then—then you can come and visit, and I can properly introduce you to Kazuma, and Akari, and—and Yuma."
Her voice caught on her son's name. Ena knew why. Their understanding of the situation flooded to Mirai, their minds still somewhat linked so that the emotions washed back and forth between them like ocean waves, so that it was sort of hard to tell where one of them began and the other ended.
Mirai didn't break off the connection. It felt better to have it there, for support. Ena smiled at her, and Mirai felt like a child again, finding comfort in her sister's embrace.
"Yes," they said. "I'd...I'd like that a lot."
They stood for a moment longer.
Then together, they made their way down the dark tunnel.
Dirt scattered over them at their passing. The ground was angling downwards. They were going deep, Mirai thought. Very, very deep. She squinted through the darkness. Even Ena's light couldn't illuminate far.
However, it wasn't long until Mirai caught the soft violet pulsing up ahead. She grinned with excitement, feeling Ena's relief crashing together with her own emotions, and they both hurried forward, anxious to reach the end of their journey.
The cavern stretched out before them. Crystals jutted out from every angle, a bumpy jagged surface of glowing shades of purple. They coated the entirety of the vaguely spherical chamber, glittering like a geode.
But it was a large, bulbous crystal in the middle, the bulging one with shadows inside, that the pair was most interested in.
The crystal hung from the ceiling and melted into the floor below, as though it were a pillar keeping the cavern alive. Through the warped glassy surface, it was impossible to see entirely what was inside—save for a little bit of flickering light, like something pulsing. Like a heart.
Mirai swallowed as she approached it, releasing Ena's hand. She put one hand against the crystal—it was warm, as though she were touching human skin. It was...eerie.
"This...this is the code...?" she said. "This is the code that The Door took from Yuma...?"
Ena just made a soft sound of affirmation. Mirai's fingers clenched against the crystal, feeling her chest tighten up. This felt so wrong. She...if she had had anything to say about this when it happened...she would have told them to stop...but she had never dreamed, never for a moment, that when Yuma told her stories about his dreamland, that it was actually...that he was actually going to the world where the Numeron Code lived...
She swallowed again, her throat tight. Ena's hand alighted on her shoulder, their hand cool like water against her skin.
"This is so wrong," Mirai whispered. She put a hand over her mouth briefly, squeezing her eyes shut. "This is...that thing just...took this from my son."
"And what would you have preferred instead?" Ena whispered. "That everything in the known universe would know what he was as soon as he entered puberty? This gives us time, Mirai. It gives us time to hide him—to protect him."
Mirai tried not to let slip the tears catching in her eyelashes. This was her son they were talking about. Her son was the one who had had these precious bits of code removed from his very soul...her son was the one who had found the Numeron Code, millennia after they had thought it was simply gone...her son was about to become the tipping point for an interdimensional war.
And here she was, hiding in another world, leaving him and her daughter completely alone.
"What is wrong with me?" Mirai said, her voice choked. "I should be there with them. I should be protecting them."
Ena squeezed her shoulder.
"You are," Ena said.
Mirai shook her head. Ena didn't understand...they really couldn't. They had never had a child, and they probably never would. Mirai inhaled sharply through her teeth.
"Okay," she whispered. She ran her tongue over her lips. "What do I do?"
Ena moved their hand off of Mirai's shoulder and onto the surface of the crystal. It melted back against her touch, parting like water until it opened up to the swirling red light within.
"We are going to install this program into your soul," she said. "This data contains Yuma's ability to channel magic. You won't be able to make use of it because your soul's program is incompatible, but it will keep the data from dissolving."
Mirai just nodded. Unlike Ena, she had never paid much attention at all to Astral advances in soul technology, so she really had no idea how any of it worked.
"What...what exactly does this do to Yuma?" she said.
"He can't channel magic," Ena said simply. "Or any of his inherent, natural soul abilities at all. It will...disable him, slightly, but not enough to make much notice. At worst, you'll see his ability at dueling drop significantly, as he won't be able to access the soul circuitry within his cards. However, the pro of this is that no one will be able to sense what he's capable of. He'll be effectively invisible to anything that senses magic."
Mirai just nodded, feeling dumb. She didn't get it—but she didn't really have to. In the end...what it meant was that it wouldn't really hurt Yuma. But it still felt...so wrong...this was a part of him. A part of him that they had stripped from him before he even knew it was there. She could say it was to protect him for as long as she wanted, but it didn't stop it from hurting.
"But you'll have to be careful," Ena said, their voice actually cracking a bit. "Because as soon as we add this data to your soul program...everything that would have been attracted to Yuma will be attracted to you instead."
"I knew that much from the start," Mirai said. She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again. "Okay. I'm ready. Let's do it."
Ena frowned, but they reached into the crystal and cupped the orb in their hands, careful not to touch it too much, but let it float just over their hands. They turned to Mirai then, and Mirai stood up a little straighter.
Ena hesitated just a moment.
"Will you be safe?" they whispered.
Mirai flashed her sister a smile.
"I don't care what it is, nothing can catch me when I'm in the wilderness," she said.
Ena bit their lip. But then they just let out a breath, approached Mirai, and carefully began to weave the data into Mirai's soul. It didn't hurt—didn't feel like much of anything at all, really. She held still until Ena was finished, and the red glow faded beneath Mirai's skin, disappearing as though it hadn't been there at all. The crystal room felt cold and dark without it, only Ena's cold orb of light providing any illumination.
And then Mirai could sense them.
"That was fucking fast," she swore. "Ena, go out the way we came."
"They're swarming," Ena whispered, their voice cracking. "Mirai, there's too many of them."
"And they'll all be after me," Mirai said.
She grabbed her sister's hand and squeezed it briefly, pressing the back of Ena's hand to her cheek. Then she abruptly closed her mind off to her sister, and pushed Ena back towards the entrance.
"Where will you go?" Ena cried back after her. "This is the only way out!"
Mirai just flashed Ena a huge grin. Then she flipped open the pocket of the cargo pants she had stolen from Kazuma years ago, and tugged free the little stick of dynamite.
"Humans have some great magic of their own," she said. "Now go."
Thankfully, Ena did not linger any longer. Mirai let out a breath, and pulled out her lighter. She could feel them crackling all over the top of the mountain, her head buzzing with the sixth sense that let her know when distortions were gathering. These were the things that were searching for her little boy. In the Astral World, she couldn't hide Yuma's code. On Earth, Yuma would have a few more years of insulation from the other dimensions, but once he had hit puberty, these things would have been tearing their doors down looking for him.
I'll go as far away as I can from him. They'll never get near him again.
She lit the stick of dynamite and threw it hard against the other side of the cave.