ATUHOR'S NOSE: We've now reached the point where I don't have a chapter immediately ready for next week and have to go back to posting as I finish. :)

"Immediately ready" I say as though I hadn't been scrambling for soundtracks (for AO3) at the last damn minute every other week. Lol only lol. :)

Oh yeah. Cliffhanger. Let's resolve that. :)

This evil smile doesn't mean anything, I've just been smiling evilly since chapter 7 ended and I think my face got stuck that way. :)

Help. :)

👼 Hi there everyone, it's Colette. Leaf was asleep and/or gone for a lot of this part, so I'm going to help tell the story for a little bit, okay?

So the lullaby had put everyone to sleep except me, and even I was really sleepy, which was really super weird because the angel transformation had made sleeping impossible, or at least I thought it had.

And then this girl with blue hair (well, mostly blue, there was a purple streak) and a whole cartload of weapons strapped to her back walked up and taunted Leaf. And she was clearly the one who had sung the magic lullaby.

I'm not sure when I decided to pretend to also be asleep, but I was just hovering there with my eyes closed. But like, only mostly; I had one eye just barely squinched open so I could still see what was going on. I don't think she could tell...

The mystery girl picked up Leaf and hoisted her over her shoulder, and then looked around at the rest of us. She walked over to Kratos and nudged him with her boot. "Impressive. Even the angels are asleep. I didn't know whether that would work on them."

I had to try really hard not to go all wide-eyed in shock. I had suspected Kratos was an angel — he was always so knowledgeable about my angel transformation, and I never saw him sleep while I was up all night — but I didn't think anyone else had any idea. And then this total stranger just says it casually like it's nothing. Who is this girl?

Anyway, next she drew a big scythe and gave it a swing and opened a swirling black portal in the air. "I'll leave this open for a bit... I imagine Leaf will want to come back after our little chat. Properly, this time." I couldn't tell who she was supposed to be talking to. Was she just thinking out loud?

And then I realized — she was gonna take Leaf away! I saw her walk into the vortex and vanish — but like she said, the portal stayed there. I didn't know how long I'd have, but I immediately flew over to Kratos and shook him. "Hey! Mr Kratos! I know you're pretending too!"

He opened his eyes quickly. "... so. My secret is out."

"You've been really helpful, and I wasn't sure why for a long time — but never mind that for now, we've gotta save Leaf!"

"... Chosen, I've been sent here by Cruxis to ensure the success of the journey of regeneration. That girl has powers beyond even my understanding — you saw her casually open a dimensional fissure. If we charge after her recklessly —"

"No! I'm not going to sacrifice my friend!" I didn't have time to try to convince Kratos, so I just acted — I flew over to Lloyd, grabbed him by the waist, and flew into the portal.

"Chosen, stop —!"

...

The other side of the portal was dark. Not completely dark, just like nighttime with a full moon, but there wasn't actually a full moon — in fact, there wasn't anything in the sky at all, no stars or anything. Looking around, I saw lots of tall buildings, all with lights shining out of their many windows. But the tallest building by a lot was the one we'd come out on top of.

I set Lloyd on the roof, pulled out a waterskin, and poured a bit on his face. "Lloyd! Wake up!"

"Bzgrlf... Professor, stop, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." He wiped the water off his face and looked around. "... huh? Colette? This isn't class... why was I asleep?"

"You were put to sleep by a magic song. The girl who sang it took Leaf through a portal — that's where we are now."

"Mrr... Right, the singing girl, I remember now." Lloyd stood up, rubbing at his eyes a bit, and then looked around. "Whoa... she led us here? Where are we?"

I looked around some more to see if I could tell where the girl had gone. The roof was made of a hard rock-like material, so there weren't any tracks. There was a little box with a door, which might lead down to the rest of the building. Around the building, I was struck by how pretty all the lights were. They almost looked like...

"Stars below, and nothing above but a void..." Lloyd said. "Is this the place Leaf dreamed about that one time?"

"Most likely, yes," Kratos said, stepping out of the portal. "In fact, I would go so far as to venture that this is probably her home."

"I'm going to save Leaf, Mr Kratos," I said, carefully not actually mentioning that he had tried to stop me.

"Yes, I can see that," he said with just the tiniest hint of an irritated-looking frown. I didn't think Lloyd noticed it, but I definitely did. "Since you're set on this path, I have no choice but to help you." He glanced back at the portal. "I imagine this portal will remain open for quite some time." The girl had said she'd leave it open, but I didn't understand why. "I woke up the Professor; she's attending to Genis and should be able to follow us soon."

"This place feels... heavy," Lloyd said, jumping up and down experimentally while Professor Raine emerged from the portal, Genis still asleep on her back. "I'm not sure what's going on, but I can barely get off the ground." He drew one of his swords — "Demon Fang." He was able to create the energy blast as normal, but it dissipated much faster on the ground here than back home.

"The mana here feels very weak," Professor Raine said. "If it weren't completely impossible, I'd say this place has no mana at all. But we'd all be dropping dead where we stand if that were the case."

🍃 I regained consciousness in what initially looked like a white void. As my eyes refocused, I realized it was actually a small room — a cell?

My backpack and spears and stuff weren't here, and I wasn't sure whether my kidnapper had left it all at Hakonesia or confiscated it after bringing me here. Probably whichever one would be less convenient, but I wasn't sure which one that was.

I shakily pushed myself to my feet. "Ow..." Walking around the room, I quickly determined that there was no door at all, somehow? Unless it was somehow embedded in the wall, which wasn't impossible, there was enough texture to it to hide the door crack if the handle was on the outside.

Well, if I wasn't getting out on my own, I'd have to get attention from someone who could. "YO! WHO'S OUT THERE? WHAT'S GOING ON?"

... ... ... No response. It looked like they were planning to leave me alone for a little —

"Ah. You're finally awake." A voice emanated from... some speaker I couldn't see, I could only assume. The voice sounded pretty close to the girl who had taunted me as I was falling asleep, so I decided this was probably the same person.

"Yeah, so who the hell are you and what the hell is this?"

"... You know, Leaf, the party isn't here. You don't need to keep up your charade."

"Charade?" Was there something I was mistaken about about myself? If I'd had deceptive intent coming here, I could easily have fooled myself after I lost my memory.

"Your little amnesia charade. Don't get me wrong, it's a great way to avoid telling them about our world, but I'm the only one here, so you can drop it now."

"Um." Kinda impressive that she'd managed to make a statement with more errors than words, but that did make it hard to work out where to start correcting it. "Seeing as I've given the Professor free rein of my notebook — or as free as we can get, seeing as we don't know my notes' cipher keys — I don't think I've been doing a particularly... existent job of concealing my home world from them."

"... 'zat so? If you're being so open, why haven't you told them anything about your friends and family?"

I blinked slowly, staring at the arbitrary spot on the wall I'd decided represented the voice since it's very hard to have a meaningful conversation with someone who isn't in a location. "Because... I don't remember my friends and family. On account of the amnesia."

"Leaf, I told you to drop the charade."

"It's not a charade, I really have amnesia —" I turned around, took off my hair tie, and separated my hair to show her the spot where I'd been injured. Except, of course... "Okay, I know it's been a few weeks and the injury is definitely healed over by now but — look, I don't know what the back of my head looks like, is there something there for you to see?"

There was a few moments of silence as I contemplated how silly it probably looked to my captor that I was showing my injury to a random spot on the wall that probably wasn't even in her direction. Assuming there even was anything there to show her. I really hoped this would work.

"... I see what's going on. You don't believe me."

I blinked and tilted my head. "Um. What?"

"You think I might have Lloyd or someone staying quiet and watching over my shoulder, in hopes of getting you to spill unintentionally."

"I'm flattered that you think I'm that dedicated, but no. Is that the sort of thing you would do?"

"Of course you're worried about that," she continued. "I just zonked you out and you have no idea what happened since then. They could be anywhere for all you know."

"You're... not listening, are you?"

"I can't believe I didn't see this coming." Yeah she wasn't listening. "Okay. New plan."

And with a loud CLICK, the lights went out.

👼 We were walking down the hall of the top floor, but not very fast, because Genis was still asleep, and also —

"This technology is fascinating. I knew Leaf must have come from a very advanced society, but this is beyond even what I was imagining."

"Professor, it's a light," Lloyd said, groaning. "I guess it's kind of neat that they could make it so bright without any smoke, but it's really just... a candle, but better."

... the Professor wasn't walking very fast.

"How'd you even get up there, anyway?" he added.

"There's a scaffolding, just over there," the Professor said, pointing to a bunch of metal bars going up the wall and up onto the ceiling where she was.

Lloyd stared at it with his face all squinchy like he didn't really get what he was looking at. "I... really don't think that's meant to climb on."

With the Professor running around in ruin mode (inverse future-ruin mode?), it was a good thing I was carrying Genis for now. Speaking of Genis, it was right around this point that he started to wake up. "Whrmg... why was I... that song?"

"That song was magic," I told Genis, setting him down on his feet, and then explained in complete detail what was going on and what we were doing.

By that time we'd reached the end of the hallway. There were lots of doors, but they were all locked and I couldn't hear anything behind them, so we left them alone for now. And at the end of the hallway was another stairwell, just like the one we'd come down, just with no stairs up to the roof.

"Everything here is so fancy," I said as I floated down the stairs to the next floor, "but the place is so empty. It's kind of sad."

"What are all these rooms for if there's nobody here, anyway?" Lloyd asked.

"That's a good question," Genis said. "Say, you can pick locks, right? I bet you could pick your way into one of these rooms."

"Probably!" Lloyd said, smiling in that way he does. "But which one? Should we just try the first one in this next hall —"

CLICK.

Suddenly the hall was completely dark. And I can see really good at night now, so I mean completely dark. The only light I could see was some little red glowy strips in the stairwell marking the steps and the handrails — I couldn't even see my wings shining.

"Whoa!" Lloyd shouted. "What just happened‽"

"Be on your guard," Kratos said.

And we were. Or I was. I couldn't tell for sure about the others in the dark. I couldn't see much; only the steps and handrails were marked, not the door, but I floated over to my best guess of where I thought it was before the lights went out. "Huh? I thought the wall was here." I pushed my hand where I was sure there had been a wall and a door before, but it just went out like there was nothing.

I didn't get a chance to start looking further before another click and another light turned back on, showing a dimly-lit hallway that was definitely not there before. And, weirdly, I noticed I could see my wings glowing again. But I still couldn't see the wall I had been looking for.

"This is weird, right?" Genis said.

"This is very bizarre," Raine agreed.

I gave Kratos a worried look. "Chosen," he said. "... this is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about. We're trapped in an unknown location with no idea how to get back."

"Well, I think that hallway looks like a good start," I said. "It's either that or we just stand here, right?"

🍃 I'm not afraid of the dark. Look, I already knew what was in this room before the lights went out (me and nothing) and it's silly to be afraid of darkness itself, right? The room was perfectly boring to begin with and my inability to see that now didn't make it suddenly more dangerous. Plus, I could still hear just fine.

I'm not afraid of the dark.

Cautiously, tapping my toes loudly with each step in hopes of hearing... anything... I made my way towards the wall.

Tap, tap, step. Tap, tap, step...

... This was taking longer than I had expected it to. Tap tap step. Tap tap step.

I really wished I still had a bigass stick or two on hand. That would make this a lot faster.

I was just starting to question whether the wall really was where I thought it was when a dim light clicked on in the distance. Somehow, a hallway had appeared.

I stared at it for a few moments, just trying to work out how that had even happened, much less what I was going to do with the information. "... Okay. Sure. I'll walk into the obvious trap. It's either that or I just stand here, right?"

Just because I was clearly being railroaded didn't mean I wasn't going to step carefully, of course. Each light barely illuminated the floor beneath it, and the hall was windy as hell so I essentially could only see the next light. My captor's thought process was completely beyond my comprehension right now, so I couldn't put it past them to drop a bridge on me out of nowhere.

After a few minutes I heard footsteps in the distance and paused. With the hall as weird as it was, I wasn't sure how far away they were, but I could definitely hear... at least two people, probably three or more? I continued walking, slower now, carefully not making a sound as I listened.

"... why is this hall shaped like this, anyway? It's so annoying."

I recognized that voice. "Lloyd?"

"Wh- was that Leaf's voice?"

"I think it was!" said a voice that I was pretty sure was Colette. "Leaf, can you hear us?"

"Yeah! I'm in some weirdly-shaped hallway with bad lighting, are y'all also in one of those?"

"Yeah, what's up with that, anyway?" Lloyd called back. "What kind of building is this?"

"That's a damn good question. I woke up in some blank room and couldn't get anywhere until the girl that zonked me out turned the lights off. Which apparently took the walls with it or something. I don't know, this place doesn't make sense."

I had been continuing to make my way down the hallway during this conversation, and based on the footstep noises so had Lloyd and Colette and whoever else was with them. But I had no idea if we were getting any closer to each other until, abruptly, we all ran into each other at a three-way intersection.

"These hallways are so cursed!" I exclaimed. "Who builds a friggin... equilateral junction like this? What purpose does this serve?"

"I'm not sure," Raine said, handing me my backpack (and thankfully, everything seemed to be inside), "but the lighting seems to be designed to funnel us down this direction. The lights back where we each came from have gone out."

"Obvious trap, right?" I said, and Raine nodded. "But, like, literally what other option do we have?"

"None that I can think of," Raine admitted. (Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I spotted Colette make some sort of motion, but when I glanced over at her and the rest of the group, I could only see Kratos frowning loudly, so I figured I must have imagined it.)

"So we walk into the trap," I declared. "But, y'know, carefully."

So we did. We walked down the third hall, keeping our eyes and weapons out.

The lights blinked on in front of us and off behind us. Blink. Blink. Blink.

It wasn't much longer — just enough for me to start getting really unsettled — before the light that blinked on was different. Instead of a dim little amber circle, it was something much bigger, illuminating a whole big room in an ambient white shine. And as we stepped into that room, a doorway just... showed up on the other side.

"Is it just me," Lloyd asked, "or does this room look like an arena?"

"Almost exactly," I said, "except for the part where the exit opened up immediately, instead of making us fight a boss first." I didn't need to remind everyone to keep their wits about them.

Finding the whole thing suspicious, I started searching around the edges of the room, poking at the wall top to bottom with my broken spear. At least that was the idea. Where the room ended and the wall began was not super clear.

"Hurry up, Leaf," Colette said. "I see the portal not far away."

Everyone else was already through. "Aight, let's get out of here —" I made for the exit, but the moment Colette got through the doorway, a clear door slammed down into the opening.

"What the —? Meteoroid!" I leapt over to the door and slashed it with my spear handle, but it just scraped the glass without even leaving a scratch. I could see Colette on the other side trying Pow Hammer and Ray Satellite (to no effect), but I couldn't hear a thing through it.

"There, now you know they can't hear you."

I whirled around to see a girl warp into the center of the room, hovering a foot or so above the floor. She looked a bit shorter than me, with skin a few shades darker than mine, blue hair just past her shoulders and a single purple streak. She was wearing an outfit of elaborate combat gear, with a big mechanical scythe in hand, a crossbow on her back, and some magic-looking thing I didn't immediately recognize hanging from her belt.

And she looked very irritated.

"So can you drop the amnesia act already, Leaf?"

I stared blankly for a moment. "... What is it you want from me so damn bad?"

"I — just told you, I want you to drop the amnesia act!"

She just wasn't getting it. "Okay. Let's pretend this is an act, and I don't have amnesia. What am I supposed to be doing with all these memories? Is there a correct response to this situation that my hypothetical non-amnesiac self would just know? Is that what's going on here? What do you want from me?"

She scowled. "Why must I justify myself to you? In fact, it is you who should make amends to me!"

Something about how she said that — "Was that a quote? You were doing quote-voice there, weren't you?"

"Oh my god, shut up — Gyoten!"

"WHOA!" I shouted, just barely bringing my spears up in time to partly deflect her sudden charge. She was already moving for a followup, but I had a counter — I channeled a quick burst of mana "Retreat!" and flash-stepped a good few yards away

— but she had a counter-counter. "Ingress." Before I could even blink, she had torn a hole in reality and caught up with me — "Hard Slash" — swung the scythe, launching me into the air — "Split Shot" — smoothly drawn the crossbow and fired two bolts — "Infernal Slice!" — and smacked me back down to the floor.

Thankfully, the bolts hadn't pierced my armor, so while I was pretty battered, I wasn't dying of perforated lungs. Which was good, because I didn't have time to bleed. I quickly rolled away and up to my feet. "First Aid. Ow. So you just pummeled the crap out of me. What's that prove?"

"This is a JRPG," she said. "If I beat you, you'll come to your senses."

"... no, that's my line. Double."

"Dekaja!" A wave of mana flowed over me to unclear effect. "None of that, thank you! Gyoten!"

"Meteorite!"

"Regress!" And in a blink, she popped back to the hole she had torn into the air. I wasn't gonna land on her now, but —

"Starstrike!" I cancelled out of my jumping attack with a spear swing that launched a blast of energy down at the mystery girl, who brought up her scythe to block it.

"Come on, Leaf, I know you've got good attacks."

"Oh, I've got good attacks all right," I said, starting to channel mana. "Wanna see one? Hyper Beam —" I thrust out my hand and a massive beam of energy blasted out.

She sidestepped, laughing. "Leaf, I told you that move sucks —"

"— Hyper Beam!"

"Wh-‽" Caught completely off-guard, she failed to avoid the second one and was blasted back into the wall, cracking the glass door.

As the second beam dissipated, my head started swimming. One of those spells would've been enough to bring me to my knees. After doublecasting like that, I couldn't see straight.

Actually, I noticed, I couldn't see at all.

My eyes snapped open and I immediately sat up — and my head started swimming again.

I felt a hand on my shoulder push me back down. "Don't overexert yourself, Leaf," Raine said.

I waited a moment for my vision to clear, whereupon I realized we were no longer in that weird white void arena. I was in a tent. Through the open flap, I could see that it was nighttime, and there were trees. A campfire too, judging by the warm light shining on them.

"Where are we? Is everyone okay...?" I asked.

"We're back at Hakonesia Peak, and most of us are just fine," Raine told me. "You're suffering from severe mana exhaustion, but you should recover without difficulty in a few days if you don't overexert yourself."

"Heh... girl was right that that spell sucks, by the way. Can you imagine if I hadn't managed to blindside her with the second one?"

"You need to be more careful, Leaf!" Colette said, entering the tent and sitting down.

I made a motion that felt like waving my hand dismissively but with how steamrolled my entire body felt it probably looked more like an errant twitch. "I was already in danger once that girl decided to kidnap me. I still don't understand what she even wanted... I mean obviously she wants me to not have amnesia anymore — and like, join the club — but she wanted me to... say or do something else? Based on these memories I should have? I dunno, she was really cryptic and every time I asked a question she just got madder."

I thought back over the encounter, trying to figure out if mystery girl had said anything useful. "... what was that place, anyway? I went from the mountain checkpoint to a white void room and then back to here without being awake for either trip, so I'm pretty lost on that."

"Okay, so, I managed to stay awake when everyone else fell asleep," Colette said, "but I pretended the spell got me too. Since 'everyone' was asleep, the girl took you into a portal, and after that..."

👼 There was just a little hallway behind the door and then I could see the rooftop, so I knew we were almost back to the portal. Everyone else was through except Leaf, who was inspecting the room.

"Hurry up, Leaf. I see the portal not far away."

Leaf looked over and nodded. "Aight, let's get out of here —"

And that was when I passed through the doorway, and the clear door slammed down like slam!

"Oh no!" I saw Leaf use one of her jumping artes, so I decided to try to break the door too — "Pow Hammer, Ray Satellite!" But the hammer just bounced off and my chakram made an ugly grinding noise and I still couldn't even see any damage on the door. "This isn't good..."

And then the mystery girl appeared floating in the middle of the arena.

Lloyd ran back in, looking concerned. "Colette, what's going on — oh..."

At this point I had resorted to just kicking the door, hoping my angelic strength would budge it, but no good. "Leaf is trapped in there with that girl, and —" Kratos said she has powers even he doesn't understand, but how does he know that? I winced as I saw the girl smack Leaf into the air and combo her into the floor.

"Let me try — Beast!" Lloyd tried a move I hadn't seen before, and it looked like it hit really hard but the door was just not moving. The others had gotten back by now and seen what was going on.

"Can magic get through the door?" I wondered.

"Only one way to find out," Raine said. She pulled out her staff and — "Barrier. ... It's no good," she said, shaking her head. "The mana got completely scattered as it passed through the glass."

"LIghtning Blade, Fierce Demon Fang." Kratos tried his attacks as well and frowned a lot when he realized it didn't work. He pulled some quartz out of the bag and applied it to his sword and tried again — "Grave Blade!" Still nothing.

Thankfully Leaf was somehow holding on, she had just landed from a midair attack and was — smirking? She said something and —

"Whoa!" Lloyd exclaimed, stumbling back as Leaf blasted a huge beam at the mystery girl. "I could feel the mana coming off of that arte!" So could I, so the way the girl just sidestepped it like it didn't affect her —

And then I was reeling from the mana as Leaf immediately did it again. Apparently the girl wasn't expecting that either, cause she didn't even try to dodge it — there was a crack! as she hit the door and I immediately realized — "The door — I heard that!"

"It must be starting to give!" Raine said.

"Beast!" Lloyd attacked it again, and this time it nudged a little bit. With some teamwork, we all managed to push it out of its frame and all rushed back into the room.

The girl was just struggling to her feet and glared as we entered. "... damn it. You people can't stay out of my way." She sighed. "I guess it's not your fault, but it's really inconvenient, you know that? Whatever, bye —" and then she waved her scythe and vanished in a swirl of energy.

"What is that girl's deal?" Genis said.

"And what was that arte Leaf got her with?" Lloyd asked. "I thought only elves could feel mana like that, it must be really" — powerful? — "wasteful."

"Apparently, in quantities like that, even humans can sense mana," Raine said, inspecting Leaf, who was on the floor out cold. "That spell was obscene... she's mostly unharmed, but her mana is severely depleted. She'll recover faster back in Sylvarant, where there's more mana in the environment."

...

We all went back to the rooftop (Professor Raine was carrying Leaf) and the portal and... and "This is all so weird, isn't it? The layout of this building completely changed while we were in it. It has all these rooms, and the other buildings have to have almost as many, but we haven't seen anyone since passing through the portal except for Leaf and mystery girl."

"Maybe they're in the other buildings?" Lloyd suggested.

"Maybe..." I took flight, fluttering up and down a bit to make sure I could fly here, and started to fly to the next building to investigate —

but suddenly I was pushed back by something, and... I don't know how to explain it. For just a second, the landscape looked like it had been shuffled around like a jigsaw puzzle.

🍃 "Wait, say that again?"

"It's true!" Colette said. "The whole landscape just jumped around, but like, in pieces!"

Something about this was messing with me — I pulled my notebook out of my backpack and tore out a blank page. "Sketch it," I said, handing the paper to Colette along with a pencil.

She quickly drew it out and handed it back to me. "Like this." She had somehow managed to put it into a cutesy chibi style despite being just buildings, but what she was depicting was unmistakable.

"A glitchy effect. She took me into a place that stops you and does a glitchy effect if you try to go to another building."

"What does a 'glitchy effect' imply?" Raine asked.

"The thing is..." I groaned in irritation. "... that I have no idea how I know the thing I'm about to say. So take it with a grain of salt.

"But the thing is, that real glitches never actually look like the classic glitchy effect. If something looks like that, it's on purpose. And why build something like that in on purpose?"

"... to signal the barrier that pushed Colette back, I would imagine," Raine said.

I nodded. "To signal 'despite what it looks like, there's actually nothing past here'. To signal that the skyline is fake."

"So..." Colette frowned, "that was some kind of... fake place? Can your world's technology do that?"

I still couldn't remember. But from the looks of it... "Apparently so, yeah."