The transition completed without friction. Verina stepped forward and arrived. On each side, her two identical android companions were ready to follow her lead. Verina Stheno stood protectively close, while Verina Euryale looked about with interest.
The surface beneath her feet was smooth, dark, and faintly luminous, etched with shallow channels that carried slow-moving light. The illumination didn't come from above or from anywhere identifiable at all. It simply existed, evenly, as if the space had agreed upon visibility as a civic necessity.
She straightened, scales rippling faintly as her posture shifted from transit to readiness.
Around her spread a vast interior hall.
The chamber was layered rather than open, terraces receding outward and upward in deliberate geometry. Walkways intersected at angles that should not have connected, yet did. Distant structures hung suspended in volumes of space that felt measured rather than empty. Figures moved along prescribed paths; some walking, some gliding, some resolving only partially into Planar form before continuing elsewhere.
No one looked at her.
"This is Anthemoessa?" Verina muttered, disappointment edging her voice. "I was promised something grander."
Ahead, a presence became distinct.
Not summoned. Not manifested.
Simply … not present one moment, and the next … there.
A Siren floated above the convergence of three walkways, her feet just above the ground. Her form was elvenoid, her features deliberate and carefully composed. Subtle iridescent feathers traced the nape of her neck and shoulders, flaring faintly with her movements. Her eyes, elongated and glinting with shifting hues, caught and held the hall's light, giving her an uncanny, otherworldly clarity. Her attire was deceptively simple: layered fabrics threaded with faint resonance patterns that pulsed in time with the chamber itself.
Beside her hovered a crystalline structure.
Geometry folded inward and outward simultaneously, facets intersecting through dimensions Verina's eyes could follow only in fragments. Light refracted through it without obeying colour, resolving instead into ordered bands of resonance that made her vision ache if she focused too long.
A Delphi.
"Well," Verina said, squaring her shoulders. Power coiled reflexively beneath her scales, a familiar, comforting pressure. "Are you here to complain about Palea? I thought Anthemoessa was a bastion of neutrality."
The Siren tilted her head in a subtle avian gesture. The feathers along her neck quivered ever so slightly.
"Verina of the Gorgon Protectorate," she said. Her voice carried layered harmonics, carefully bounded, each syllable placed with architectural precision. "You have voluntarily entered Anthemoessa's civic influence. Your transit has been registered."
Verina bared her teeth in a grin. "Registered. Adorable."
She rotated her shoulder and took a step forward.
Or rather, she tried.
Nothing happened.
Immobile but unable to sense any constraints upon her, Verina masked her confusion with bluster.
"Is this the part where you tell me I'm under arrest?" she snorted. "Or do you sing first?"
Only the faint outer-arm feather fringes twitching imperceptibly signalled the Siren's acknowledgement.
The Delphi's internal geometry shifted. Verina tensed, but even as she did, instinct told her it was not a movement of aggression. The Delphi was rotating, revealing a new alignment. The air tightened, not with pressure, but with information.
Verina's grin faltered. Before she could speak, a sharp intrusion sliced through her neural augments.
[Stop.]
The word arrived fully formed: encrypted and urgent.
[Do not escalate,] Verina Euryale transmitted. [Do not posture. We are inside a regulated Apeiron field.]
Verina scowled. She spoke out loud, not bothering to mask her communication. "We can handle a couple of guards."
[This is not a threat interface,] the reply came back instantaneously. [It is a jurisdictional one.]
Verina's attention flicked back to the Delphi, irritation giving way to something less familiar.
[These are bureaucrats, not soldiers,] the neural transmission added. [That Delphi was not challenging you. It was providing record continuity.]
Verina's eyes narrowed.
"And the Siren?" she asked. Quieter. But not due to caution, of course. Simply in seeking information.
There was a fractional pause.
[The Siren is here to ensure equilibrium. Including yours.]
The Siren spoke again, her voice never rising. The delicate feathered collar along her nape rippled as she inclined her head slightly.
"This Delphi carries a preserved configuration associated with a Palean administrative function," she said. "It has been altered, its continuity disrupted by your actions."
Verina laughed, sharp and defiant. "I took a job. Infrastructure gets damaged." She was a Gorgon. She refused to appear weak or defer to anyone.
The Siren's gaze remained steady regardless.
"The resulting cascade activated an automated stabilisation protocol," she continued. "That protocol now governs a severed world."
Pause. An oddly avian tilt of the head.
"For Anthemoessa," the Siren continued, "this constitutes unlicensed interference with a continuity structure under multilateral observation."
The words were neither accusation nor outrage. They were classification.
For the first time since she stepped through the rift, Verina did not immediately respond.
Around them, motion continued uninterrupted. Citizens passed. The liminal space remained indifferent. Anthemoessa did not stop for her. And somewhere beneath her bravado, realization solidified.
That she hadn't stepped onto a battlefield; she'd arrived at an administrative hub.
The Delphi's geometry shifted again, facets sliding through alignments that made Verina's vision ache if she followed them too closely. She studied it warily.
Delphic existence was not sapient in any biological sense. It behaved less like a mind and more like a principle: a geodimensional intelligence whose presence resembled the mathematical expression of a universal constant. Predictable as gravity within its own frame of reference. Utterly alien outside it.
"My Delphic compatriot requests that you sync with the flux," the Siren said, her tone unperturbed. The feathers along her collarbone and outer arms flared briefly, a subtle accent to her authority. "It will ease continued interaction."
[I agree,] Verina Euryale added. [You are missing context. Things are not as you might think.]
Verina bristled, but pride refused to let her ask the Siren for clarification. Instead, she replied through the neural lattice alone.
[Explain this 'flux,'] she directed.
A flicker of irritation coloured the return signal. Verina Euryale did not bother to mask it.
[The liminal conflux. 'Flux' in common usage. It is an information continuum intrinsic to this space and to Anthemoessa's broader civic architecture. A crude analogue would be a distributed computational network, like a primitive society's so-called 'internet'.]
The last phrase carried a faint edge.
[Watch your tone,] Verina snapped back. [I know the concept; I simply didn't recognize the local implementation.]
Something like an offended huff rippled across the link.
Verina ignored it and issued the command instead. Her neural augments reached outward.
The flux answered.
Understanding unfolded rather than arrived. There was no flood, no strain, no sense of intrusion. Information simply became available at the moment it was relevant, as though her mind had always known where to look.
The hall resolved itself.
The walkways were no longer a maze but a pattern shaped by layered priorities: traffic density, species ergonomics, jurisdictional flow. She knew which routes led to services, to exits, to interstitial transfer points. She understood why some figures moved the way they did and why others occupied volumes of space rather than surfaces.
She could identify any sapient she focused on, as long as they'd allowed permission.
Her gaze returned to the Siren, and she stilled. Even the metallic braids rising from her scaled crown froze mid-sway.
Verina had encountered few serious threats since leaving the Protectorate. She'd scoured her way across realities with hardly a care. She'd broken cultures and toppled institutions. With training, preparation, and violence applied at the correct angle, Verina Stheno was a force capable of rewriting worlds.
Yet before, acting in the capacity of some clerical greeter, stood an entity that rudimentary societies could have worshiped as a god.
And, according to the flux, some literally had.
"I see we now understand each other better," the Siren, Citizen Welsa Er'nea, stated serenely. "Welcome to Anthemoessa, Verina."
\ - / - \ - /
Verina exhaled and moved forward, her two android companions flanking her. Verina Stheno walked slightly ahead with deliberate precision, while Verina Euryale's steps echoed softly behind, her gaze darted curiously from one detail to the next. Welsa Er'nea and the Delphi both glided effortlessly over the floor: the Siren's feet drifted casually above it as she hovered along without any visible support.
A tall elf argued with a quadrupedal figure whose fur shifted through spectral hues. Welsa's voice chimed in softly beside her.
"Conflict here," the Siren murmured, voice layered with faint harmonics. Her shoulder feathers flared imperceptibly as she spoke, an instinctive cue of focus. "Misregistered item. Nothing requires intervention; it will resolve itself according to flux parameters."
Nearby, a demon floated, bulk suspended by faint currents of resonance, gesturing as though dictating terms to a pair of humans who barely reacted. "The flux accounts for jurisdictional weight," Welsa added. "Even when raw intent is present, outcomes are managed before escalation."
Verina's head swivelled as two figures came to a wall. Reality seemed to fold in around them, and they disappeared.
"Can anyone … fold through objects like that?" she asked, curiosity edging her tone.
"They have permission," Welsa said simply. "Only entities registered for that volume can occupy it in that manner."
Verina's pace slowed as she processed what she saw. She could see why the flux had been necessary: everything was alive with information, but Welsa's commentary turned it from raw data into a coherent picture. She started to notice the flow; how corridors bent to redirect traffic, how interstitial nodes for rest, nourishment, or transit were placed with meticulous precision.
Verina glanced at the Siren, raising an eyebrow. "So this is just … a hallway?"
Welsa's laugh resonated gently, feathers along her nape catching an imperceptible shimmer in the ambient light. "This is civic life, Verina. The flux is not merely observation; it is a form of scaffolding for our society. The flux balances authority with function. Even seemingly trivial acts are mediated. Equilibrium is maintained without direct intervention."
Verina allowed herself a small, begrudging nod. She wouldn't reveal that she was impressed.
A particular wall shimmered as they approached. Welsa didn't slow at all and folded through without resistance, vanishing beyond. Verina followed, her android sisters Verina Stheno and Verina Euryale in tow, and the Delphi was last in its silent, facet-shifting way.
A new world snapped into existence around her.
Open sky, sunlight filtering through clouds. A crowded street that would have been instantly recognizable on Palea: the sounds of traffic, the blare of music, and the susuration of overlapping voices resonating through the air. A building stood directly before them with the scent of fried food wafting through the open door, and the illuminated sign above named it The Faded Lantern.
Verina knew that the gathering of alien creatures would have caused shock on the surface of the real Palea. But here, traffic didn't stop, and crowds didn't panic. The humans flowed around and past them; obviously aware of their presence but unbothered. Verina Euryale even stopped a passerby to pose some kind of question, and the human stopped and answered politely as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
"This setting has been fabricated from fragments of the severed world, Palea," Welsa explained. "Your actions have influenced its configuration. Its fate, as the locals might say. I judged it appropriate that you experience familiarity amidst novelty."
Verina smirked indifferently. "Whatever you like."
Welsa nodded without losing any of her composure and guided them inside.
The interior scene fit the Palean setting perfectly, down to varnished wood tables, the low hum of conversation, and the faint clink of cutlery. Patrons sipped drinks and exchanged casual words.
None reacted to the sudden appearance of a gorgon trio, a Siren with subtly twitching feathers, and a slowly intrafolding geodimensional existence, its internal facets twisting within itself in impossible harmony.
Verina strode boldly toward a table near the center, the flux instantly guiding her path around clusters of liminal patrons. The table was vacant, perfectly aligned to accommodate them.
Welsa's voice added context as she glided beside Verina. "The scenario adjusts the environment for comfort, nourishment, and privacy. Observe the flux's discretion in allocating resources."
A server appeared almost instantly at her words, sliding between tables with practiced ease. Her apron was faintly smudged with grease, and the nametag above her breast read Jenna. She stopped in front of them, eyes giving a bored sweep over what should have been the most outlandish of patrons without a flicker of surprise.
"What can I get you folks?" she asked, a simple electronic touchpad in hand. Her voice was warm, casual, but also faintly impatient
Verina leaned forward slightly, still amused. "Nutrient spheres, crystallized resonance fillets, and a floating energy construct for each of us," she said, pointing at herself and her two sister androids.
Jenna nodded, tapping at her pad. She repeated the order word for word without batting an eye, then turned to Welsa expectantly.
"A hamburger," the Siren hummed. "With onion rings and a soft drink." The fringe along her arms lifted slightly with the inflection, a natural accompaniment to her words.
"One house special," Jenna confirmed, poking at her tablet without even looking at the screen. Her eyes flicked to the Delphi next.
The geodimensional entity's internal geometry shifted, and Jenna nodded. Verina waited with some curiosity for the waitress to repeat the Delphi's order, but she was mildly disappointed as she instead watched the waitress turn smoothly, heading to the kitchen.
"Coming right up," Jenna said as she departed. "Gimme ten minutes."
Welsa's eyes flickered subtly in amusement. "The scenario accommodates your needs," she said. "It integrates flux discretion with conventional service."
The Siren's gaze next turned towards Verina.
"Now," she said calmly in a non-confrontational manner. "While we wait for our meals, let us discuss the consequences of your actions for the severed humans of Palea."