Painter froze.
They knew?
He felt cold. Yumi pulled closer to him, and the scholar looked at her, seeing her. It was the goggles maybe?
Painter swallowed. The bailiff and the others had frozen. Even Liyun just stood there. Completely motionless. Were they waiting for something from him? Their orders were to go in and destroy the machine if the scholars refused to surrender it. Yet nobody moved.
“Different dimensions,” Painter finally said to the scholars. “That overlap somehow. That’s what’s going on. We exist in the same space, but can’t see each other or interact, except in specific ways.”
“Oh, that’s an excellent theory,” the lead scholar said. “You hear that, Sunjun?”
“Sure did,” Sunjun said as the two other scholars rolled their machine out of the tent, onto a large plank that sloped to the stone ground. “The theory has problems, but it’s pretty good for a kid without any real context. He’d have made a good scholar.”
“Indeed,” the lead scholar said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Painter said, pointing. “Bailiff, take that machine.”
“Painter,” Yumi said, “maybe we should get more information first.”
“First,” he said, “we at least…” He trailed off, noticing that the bailiff, the city officials… Liyun, Hwanji, and Chaeyung were all just standing there. He noticed for the first time that their immobility seemed unnatural. They weren’t even blinking.
“Liyun?” Painter asked. “Chaeyung?”
“I regret to be the one to reveal it,” the lead scholar said, “but you have no idea what is happening here, child.”
Painter seized Liyun by the arm, shaking it. And her very shape—clothing included—began to shift. Darkening. Giving off wisps of blackness. She looked at him, and her eyes had gone white. Like…like holes drilled in her head.
Painter screamed, his voice joining Yumi’s own cry. He jumped away, wiping his hand on his tobok.
“What did you think they were?” the lead scholar asked as the machine started up.
Painter, desperate, grabbed a rock. He rushed the machine, but the scholar grabbed his arm. Contrary to what Painter had assumed before, this man was strong. In desperation, Painter slammed his rock against the man’s head.
The scholar’s head shifted, its color bleeding away before darkness, his eyes becoming ivory bores into eternity.
“No,” Painter said, pulling out of the thing’s grip. “You too?”
“I’m afraid so,” the lead scholar—nightmare—said.
“Painter!” Yumi cried, backing up toward him, cowering as the entire landscape began to change. Buildings turning black, giving off wisps of smoke. The ground. Even the light in the sky darkened.
“All along?” Painter asked, pained. “Were they just…puppets? Nightmares, with no thoughts?”
“No, the machine let them be themselves,” the lead scholar said, his face distorted, made of shifting wisps of smoke—still wearing goggles, oddly. “It’s what happens when it needs us. It’s hard though. To walk the line between the memory of what we were and the reality of what we have become. They have to be kept from understanding their natures. Otherwise there are…complications.”
The thing that had been Liyun turned toward them, and her form took on a lupine cast. With spiked sides, inky darkness. Painter recognized this thing; it was the stable nightmare he’d been hunting.
Liyun was the stable nightmare.
Unlike the scholar, she suddenly appeared to have no memory of who she’d been—or who Painter was. She prowled toward him, going down on all fours, growing to enormous size.
Painter tried to stand between it and Yumi. “You won’t take her.”
The thing stopped, and for the briefest moment seemed to recognize him.
“Child,” the lead scholar-nightmare said. “What is it you think you’re protecting?”
He froze, and his heart became ice. He turned to find Yumi had fallen to her knees. She was distorting—far less than the others, but still twisting, her skin turning to smoke. She looked at him, horror warping her features in an unnatural way.
“No…” he whispered. No.
He…he couldn’t think.
Yumi. Yumi…
“Nikaro,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I… What is happening…to me…”
“Tragic,” the lead scholar said, stepping forward and seizing Painter by the arm. “I admit, this was an excellent ploy by the spirits. Connect one of the girls to an outsider to anchor her soul? Prevent us from altering her memories? It might have worked.”
He heaved Painter back, slamming him against the machine, where the other scholars—also having become nightmares—were tweaking it.
“I’m sorry this took us so long to do,” the creature in front of Painter said. “The delay makes it more cruel, I understand. Regrettably, this machine needed to charge up—our power source didn’t work. And beyond that, some rogue spirits had to be captured. How they escaped is…distressing. Thank you for helping us return them to their prison.”
“Please,” Painter said, then reached toward Yumi, his heart wrenching at the sight of her huddled on the ground in a fetal position of pure terror. Darkness streamed off her as she clawed at her arms, as if to tear her own skin off. “Please. Let me help her.”
“The machine is lord now,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
The scholar nodded to the others, his hollow eyes expanding. They turned some switch on their machine, and Painter felt a surge of coldness wash through him. Followed by a distinct, terrible snap.
Whatever it was that had linked him to Yumi broke. Painter felt himself hurled away from the scene. They shrank, and he smashed into a blackness—like he’d plunged into the ocean. Only he was still moving, an arrow in flight.
Darkness.
Hion lines like a flash.
A blur of buildings.
Then slam. He hit something.
Incredible pain followed, coursing through him, accompanied by sickening pops and a sound like leather being stretched. When it finally subsided he found himself lying in his apartment, covered in sweat.
Once again occupying his own body.
With Yumi nowhere in sight.
Yumi had always considered the appearance of the daystar to be a good sign. An omen that the primal hijo would be open and welcoming this day. In fact, the star seemed extra bright today—glowing with a soft blue light on the western horizon as the sun rose in the east.
A powerful sign, if you believed in such things. There’s an old joke that mentions that lost items tend to always be in the last place you look for them. Strangely, by converse, omens tend to appear in the first place people look for them. （Even if you’re doing so for the second time.）
Yumi did believe in omens. She had to, as an omen had been the single most important event in her life. One that had appeared right after her birth, marking her as chosen by the spirits. She settled herself on the warm ground as her attendants, Hwanji and Chaeyung, entered. They bowed in ritual postures, then fed her with maipon sticks and spoons—a meal of rice and a stew that had been left on a hotspot outside to cook.