Chapter V29.VIII.2022
Nighttime. Calm park under a cloudy sky, submerged in a layer of thin silvery mist, with ashanti, maple and feather trees hugging the narrow, curved damp alleyways paved with fine yellow gravel. Water slowly dripping from tree leaves. Air completely calm and stationary, humid and chill, filled with odor of recent rain. Night birds hooted and gurgled occasionally, but Tayne, though being a village kid, recognised barely one of these sounds.
Tayne layed on a park bench staring at the sky, complete with three large moons leaking dim white light through the clouds, and breathed heavily, while trying to regain control over her numb body and simultaneously rethinking several things at once. Caithe... She's probably captured and on the way to wherever this damned Starscape is, and Tayne is in the middle of nowhere. With no way to help and no connection to the Cosmarium since her scroll turned to dust... is she even in the Cosmos or in one of these pocket dimensions again?
The last thing Tayne remembered was the black fog covering her. She instantly lost breath, and then reality had flown away... There were lines, ropes of colours she couldn't now imagine or name, dancing and twisting amidst the void... And the next thing she knows she's waking up on a wooden bench. Is this the afterlife, like in fairy tales?
After her body slowly unfroze, regaining sensitivity and mobility, Tayne decided it probably isn't. Her scratches - she managed to catch a bunch on her legs from glass while sitting on the floor - still hurted, and when she tasted blood that came out of one of them, it tasted pretty alive. Besides, the afterlife does not exist.
Upon coming to that conclusion, Tayne got up and started jogging along the alleyway. If this is the Cosmos, she needs to find any town and contact the department of... research, probably. Or justice. Or both. Damned be the magician for destroying her scroll, it would've been so much easier to navigate with the Cosmarium...
Then Tayne remembered: she still had Caithe's scroll! After Naia drank from it, they threw it to Tayne and she put it in a pocket... Yet unfortunately, that thing turned out to be impossible to turn on. It was so desperately out of power it couldn't even light the "someone, charge me, pretty please" indicator. Naia really had absorbed all they could.
At least charging stations are more common in the wild than department offices.
A good half-hour passed before Tayne found an exit in this labirynth of alleyways. There was no signposts, seldom even a lamp pole. Anxiety grew within Tayne with each passing minute, she clenched trying not to snap, she was constantly out of breath switching between jogging and walking, and to top it all off she was hungry: no surprise considering she only ate a couple cookies in the morning. When she finally caught a glimpse of a gold-coated exit gate, shimmering in lamplight through the woods, she derailed and ran straight at it through thick vegetation.
Five minutes later, following an old asphalt road, she entered a small village. Rushing to the central tower, she kicked the door open, flew by a decrepit guardpost and ran to the wormhole frame - thank the stars, there's a wormhole here, she's truly in the Cosmos! The dormant frame took ten-ish seconds to turn on upon registering Tayne's movement - after which she finally stepped into the Nexus.
Each settled planet in the Cosmos had its own local Nexus - a network of wormholes, providing near instant travel between any settlements on the planet. Tayne moved through it from one archway to the next, from a hub to a hub, through corridors, rooms and platforms - with soft couches as seating space, plant beds everywhere and walls, once pure white, covered in artwork made by generations of locals. She was passing surreal landscape art, portraits of local historic figures, folk stories and movie characters, unfortunately, having no time to waste on scrutinising them. Tayne rapidly grew appreciative of this random planet: compared to her motherland's Nexus, this one was way more vibrant with character (and characters).
Tayne travelled from a village to a town to a city, through local and regional hubs, until she found the planetary capital and delved into its subnetwork. By that time she ditched the idea of going to any random department office or contacting someone through the Cosmarium. Nope, she'll rather find the whole planet's head office of the research department and present her story there - since what if less respectable places will instantly assume she's insane after «help, my sister was abducted by aliens»? Tayne knew nothing about this planet's customs, she haven't even heard its name - Vatravishna Yadi - before.
She learnt that name from a random sign, and in a similar fashion acknowledged that it is located in the Yadi system (which still told her nothing on the matter of how far from her planet it actually is), and that its capital, the city of Zakossos, is populated by six hundred thousand citizens and has an interstellar railway station (hurray, a way home!). She also got to know that Vatravishna Yadi's day consists of a whopping fifty five standard hours and that in Zakossos it is currently three hours past midnight.
Zakossos itself was presumably a student campus city, at least, Tayne assumed that after entering its subnetwork. Firstly, even at the regional hub, a few young adults were sitting on sofas with laptops or scrollpods, working on something in the middle of the night; secondly, the station at the city center was named "Reyne University"; and thirdly, as Tayne approached it, young adults appeared even more, with some sleeping on couches. Sleeping in the damn Nexus!
Wait... how does a study shedule even work when the day is more than twice the standard one?
Finally Tayne reached the central station and immediately stopped for a bit - since the first thing she saw upon entering was a gigantic map of the whole town center paved on the floor, and Tayne, naturally, was drawn to it. She studied the floor for a good half-minute, looking for department buildings - the map, though partially covered with beanbags scattered around with students sitting or sleeping on a large percentage of them, was very clearly readable - before mentally slapping herself and proceeding to an information column - an iridescent obelisk of glowing glass she only just noticed - with her questions.
At first talking barely comprehensibly, as she was still catching her breath, yet nearly breaking down and screaming - damned stupid robots that dare to waste her time on clarifications of what she's saying when she's clearly in panic! - she finally found out that her desired head office of the research department is right above her head, on one hundred and twelfth floor of the university. And after asking for directions, Tayne headed to the elevators - which conveniently were right there, all around the outer wall of the gigantic circular hall, which was that station.
She charged at the nearest one with such determination and tunnel vision, that she managed to trip over a beanbag halfway and lost balance. A muffled «ow», a couple quiet laughs from nearby students and Tayne's own tactile sense hinted her that the beanbag was already occupied.
Tayne sprang up immediately, terribly embarassed. An Archon she fell upon, presumably a student, lied with a scroll in hands on a pastel orange bag. They were quite tan, had loose chest-length auburn hair with scarlet strands scattered on the beanbag, and were dressed in a cropped black shirt and wide light green pantalones with a rainbow-colored belt. As for the shoes, they (or is it she? Tayne wasn't sure about this archon's age) wore none.
"Oh stars, i'm so terribly sorry!" - rattled Tayne, hid her face in the palms (that was a family thing) and thought to slip away, but the archon, surprisingly, entered the dialogue on a lighthearted voice:
"It's okay! Are you new here? Searching for something?"
"Kinda," - Tayne shortly responded, still considering escape. - "I'm after the research department."
"Would you want me to guide you?"
"No... or... uhm... actually i'll greatly appreciate it, but i'm in a hurry," - Tayne finally made a decision. In any other situation she'd prefer to find everything herself, but with time ticking she feared to get lost (since who knows how intricate that hundred and twelfth floor's plan will be), and even besides that... let's be honest, she needed someone to vent to. But that one can wait.
With no hesitation, the archon got up, rolled up their scroll and attached its binder to the belt from the side, confidently following after Tayne to the elevator.
"So... how long are you in the city for?" - asked the archon.
"Less then an hour."
"Woah. Where from?"
Tayne sighed. "Probably the other side of the Cosmos, I don't even know. The Lua system in the Lynx sector."
Tayne hesitated for a bit in front of the elevator summoning tablet - there were three buttons on it, which one is she supposed to press, one or two arrows up? - and the archon called the elevator for her.
"Sorry, i haven't been in big cities much," – explained Tayne, – "i'm not very good with elevators."
"You'll get used to it," - smiled the archon. - "Oh by the way, you can stop with your politeness already and call me by informal you and by she, i'm not that ancient! What's your name, by the way?"
"Tayne," - a quiet doorbell sound played right after she said it: that was the elevator arriving.
"Tayne," - the archon tried to mimic the doorbell sound with her tongue like an exotic additional consonant, which obviously failed, but she seemed to be amused by it. – "I'm Lana! Glad to welcome you here."
Tayne sighed with slight irritation and entered the elevator.
It was a giant rectangular room, larger than some bedrooms even, well suitable for a hundred archons to fit. The walls were made of silvery metal and hardened black glass, and the floor and the ceiling were mirrors, thus making for an effect of standing in an infinite shaft, with top and bottom being lost in the fog (magnificent. if only Tayne had time to look at all the things around...). The room was lit dimly in a pink hue by thin luminous threads, encircling the whole room along where the walls meet the ceiling. One of the walls was lined end to end with a couch, and the opposite one was covered with dozens upon dozens of buttons, having numbers from -12 all the way to a whopping 131. Currently the elevator was on floor number zero, as shown by an indicator above all the buttons.
Considering said zeroth floor was twice as high as Tayne's family home - counting the chimney! - Tayne failed to even imagine how tall the whole building was. She had to look at this architectural monolith from the outside when all things are done.
Almost without checking, Tayne booped a «112» button, panicked for a second thinking she had pressed a wrong one, made sure she hadn't and plopped on the couch, stretching out. So much better than a park bench... A random quiet moan escaped her: she was so tired after being on a long run.
Meanwhile, the elevator closed the doors and blasted off, accelerating so fast Tayne was glad she laid down preemptively – in such a condition she probably would've lost her balance standing anyway. Moreover, her ears suddenly clogged due to pressure change, and as luck would have it, Lana decided to ask her something right after.
"I can't hear you, can you get closer?"
Looking a bit puzzled, Lana sat near her and repeated:
"I just wanted to ask what happened to you with all these scratches. If, of course, you're comfortable to talk about it."
Chute. Tayne completely forgot how her legs look with all the cuts from glass shards below the knees, as well as dried drips of blood. And since Tayne wore shorts, all of them were clearly visible.
"Combat wounds," – she muttered sarcastically. – "From glass."
"Oh stars, what happened?!"
"I was in the Metacosmos with my family..." - upon hearing these words, Lana lit up with enthusiasm and wanted to say something, but Tayne had immediately cut that enthusiasm short: "...and we got attacked by bandits. One person who was with us is dead, they took my sister hostage, and I don't even know if my mom is alive! What happens when a hologram's core is destroyed, do they die?!"
"Oh," - was the only thing Lana could say.
At that moment the elevator finally decided it was time to arrive already. As such, it started decelerating, and so rapidly so, that gravity completely ceased operation for a quick second. Tayne, who was not ready for this at all, only wanted to stand up and get back to running - but instead her abrupt movement propelled her up in the air. She stayed afloat for a good couple of missed heartbeats, swinging her arms in panic in desperate attempts to reach the handrail above. After which she fell back - as suddenly as she had arisen. Thankfully, right into Lana's hands, who then carefully assisted Tayne with standing up.