EP.1 — The Butterfly's Dream (3)

Ash's charge toward the altar was nothing short of a streak of lightning. He trampled, cut down, and crushed the swarming Sentinel Walkers as he pressed onward, straight for the altar rising jaggedly into the air ahead.

At last, he reached Akina's side. He seized her convulsing shoulders, but the girl only let out pained screams, her strange golden eyes blazing.

"What in the world is—!"

Someone answered his muttering. It was Ifrit. Having just blasted the head off an approaching Sentinel Walker, she shouted:

"An Echo Effect! Damn it all!"

"...Echo?"

Ash seized on the word as a keyword and hurriedly searched his internal database.

'...What? Nothing?'

As if the subject had been deliberately filtered out, not a single entry on the Echo Effect turned up. The data cards Akina had handed him were vast beyond measure—how could there be nothing? A strange, inexplicable unease crept over him. But this was no time to sink into contemplation. Ash rounded on Ifrit, who seemed to know something about it.

"What in heaven's name is this thing?"

"Explain it? Now?"

Ifrit barked at him, then, catching sight of his face, clicked her tongue shortly. Punching through another Sentinel's armor plating with Dragon's Breath, she kept talking.

"It's something that happens when you burrow too deep into a Nexus Port. You get completely eroded by the flood of data and... how do I put it. You lose yourself."

"...What? Lose herself...?"

"First time hearing about it? Didn't the kid warn you? For a Technomancer, the threats don't only come from outside. A Deep Dive is the gamble!"

He hadn't known. He was hearing all of it for the first time.

"Gyaaaaaak!"

Even now, Akina was tearing at her own hair and shrieking.

Ash stood frozen for a moment, staring at her—and then reached for the cable linking the back of the girl's neck to the Nexus Port.

Jack O'Lantern and Ifrit shouted at the same instant.

"Hey! Are you out of your mind?!"

"Boss! Yank that cable now and it's all over! She'll be completely fried!"

Ash's hand stopped midair. Something surged up ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in him, and he roared:

"Then what am I supposed to do?! Just stand here and watch?!"

At his cry, Ifrit raked her hands roughly through her hair.

"Then you pray. Pray that kid... overcomes it on her own. That she doesn't lose herself."

There was nothing they could do. Neither the might of his blade, nor an idol's firepower, nor any scrap of knowledge. Nothing in this world could save a girl who had fallen into the abyss of cyberspace. It was something she alone had to overcome.

That truth handed Ash a crushing, all-encompassing despair.

'...'

He understood now. Why Akina had been so tense that day. Why her eyes, fixed on the Nexus, had been laced with fear.

And yet—she had passed on every last drop of this world's knowledge through those data cards, so why had she stripped out only everything concerning the Echo Effect? Perhaps it wasn't that she wanted to hide a danger like this one. Perhaps she'd been afraid he would talk her out of the expedition.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

Knowing Ash's nature, he very well might have. A gamble that could cost her her very self—for a man whose social experience extended no further than an agrarian society, such a risk was beyond imagining.

—See you later.

The words Akina had said with such an easy face carved straight through Ash's main core.

And so, gently, he gathered Akina into his arms—even now she was spitting out fragments of incomprehensible data like some alien dialect. A body of steel could transmit no warmth. But he held her with all his heart regardless.

Then he whispered, low, beside her ear.

"Asoja. No—Akina."

It was a command.

"Come back to me. You have things you must do, do you not? The long-nursed debt called vengeance. Why would you cast all of that away?"

And at the same time, it was a plea.

"You must come back. I will be right here."

Or had it only been his imagination? For a single instant, her golden eyes seemed to turn toward Ash.

Akina Greenwood. The world she was seeing now was made entirely of green gridlines. Up, down—no direction could be measured in this boundless space. It was a sea of information, unfolding without end. The grid beneath her feet stretched away like an infinite horizon, while above her head data churned in uncountable currents, like a night sky streaked with the Milky Way. A wind of zeros and ones brushed past her ears, crackling with raw machine noise.

In that space, the girl stood alone. A panoramic vista of information, at once breathtaking and terrifying. That was what cyberspace was—a place where a girl's 'consciousness' felt like no more than a speck of drifting dust.

At some point, the very sense of I had begun to blur. It felt as though everything about her was being disassembled, taken apart, and seeping into that green sea. Just as the existence called Akina Greenwood was about to dissolve into the abyss—

—KWAAAAAA...!

The world lurched. The quietly flowing green grid flickered all at once and heaved violently. The flat gridlines twisted and bent on their own, sculpting out three-dimensional space. As if paint had been spilled across a canvas, the lines began to bleed their own colors: red vivid as blood, gray thick as ash, gold roaring like flame, all tangled in a dizzying swirl. Some of it hardened into scorched stone; some into polished wood. The reek of burning timber. The iron tang of blood. Screams and shrieks, even the thunder of something detonating. Everything was complete, undeniable reality—impossible to dismiss as mere data. The multilayered data matrix of green gridlines had become a burning temple.

"Oracle! Stay with me!"

Someone seized the girl's shoulders and shouted. When she finally turned, she was no longer Akina. She was a woman draped in magnificent silk robes, striking for the pair of horns rising above her brow.

"...Um, so—your name was definitely... Ryu? Right?"

But rather than answer her, the man pressed on with his own business. Or perhaps—perhaps that was simply how it had been recorded.

"The humans have risen in revolt!"

Humans? Humans like—me? My name is Akina Greenwood. Born and raised in Sanctum...

But against her will, another's data came pouring down like a waterfall.

Humans. Livestock, gene-edited into being for simple labor. And those things have risen in revolt?

The arrogance of noble blood flooded her thoughts in an instant.

"...Yes. Humans."

The blurred landscape sharpened with every passing second, impossibly vivid now.

"Humans! Those base, ungrateful wretches—at long last!"

"Oracle, we must hurry! Before they breach the main shrine!"

His shout dragged Akina—no, something of the past—back into reality.

"I know! But where is my guard? Where is my warrior?"

"He's holding the humans back! He should reach the main shrine soon—"

KWAANG!

A brilliant something came flying from the far end of the corridor and blew one wall apart. Stone shards and dust burst in every direction. Through the spreading haze, a crowd revealed itself.

Humans—all of them cloaked in robes bearing the same crest.

"No... they've already come this far!"

The Oracle gritted her teeth. A sacred sanctum, defiled by the hands of base creatures who didn't even know their place. Look at them—ungrateful life-forms daring to hold their own creators hostage. Their very existence was blasphemy.

"Go! I will hold them here! Quickly!"

Ryu charged at the humans, his full-body barrier systems flaring to life. And where, at a moment this desperate, was her sworn guardian—what could he possibly be doing?

A man's figure flashed through the Oracle's mind. A towering swordsman, his whole body machine. The one she had assembled with her own hands, who had been at her side ever since.

Mister □□.

"...Mister □□?"

And right at that moment—

A strange voice, from somewhere. And yet—strange thing—when she heard it, her turbulent heart seemed to settle almost at once.

Vengeance.

That one word lodged itself in her mind. Yes. Vengeance. Against everything that had made me this way. But against whom? The humans before her eyes? Or Sanctum?

Wait. What was Sanctum, again?

"Kraaagh!"

Her thoughts did not last long—for Ryu, who had thrown himself so gallantly into the fray, collapsed through his shattered barrier, blood scattering.

"Ryu!"

He died then and there. And yet, somehow, she felt she had seen this scene before. Sorrow surged up. Rage boiled over. And even that sorrow and rage seemed worn and frayed at the edges—as though she had lived through them hundreds, thousands of times more.

Fragments of memory came swirling down. Ryu's cold corpse. The Oracle's face, twisted with fear and fury.

Is this my memory? Then—is the Oracle me? Then who is Akina Greenwood?

Two sets of memory collided violently, scrambling her consciousness. Green gridlines overlaid the burning temple. Glitch artifacts bloomed, and the world crumbled in patches.

Then, around the bewildered Oracle—no, around Akina—the humans gathered, their frames splintering into pieces past all recognition. And every one of them spoke at once:

Familiar. But warped into something grotesque—a distorted electronic voice.

It was Ash's voice.

One of the humans reached out a hand. In it, he held a single sharp blade.

The edge drove into the Oracle's thigh.

"GYAAAAAAAAAH!!"

The girl screamed at the pain. The human beside her ran her through with a spear.

"Haaah—haaAAAAAAHK!!"

Surrounded by formless things and carved to pieces, the Oracle groped at her own body, her own face, screaming all the while. Cyberspace collapsed. And Akina, caught within it, collapsed as well.

Through the ruin, the conversations with Ash that the girl remembered kept pouring out, over and over.

Like—an echo.

"...Asoja?"

It was the very instant Ash and Akina's eyes met. The blue haze coiled around her body shifted to gold, then spread outward in vast concentric rings.

TWOOOM!

A violent shockwave swept everything from the altar. Ash and the other Pathfinders—and even the Sentinels encircling the altar—were thrown sprawling backward by the overwhelming pulse of energy. An electromagnetic burst like an EMP shock made manifest.

Standing closest, hit dead center, Ash lay dazed for a long while ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠beneath the cascade of system messages rising across his optical sensors.

Amid the waterfall of warnings, Ash slowly lifted his head.

Akina was no longer in his arms.

She stood at the very center of the altar. On her own two legs.

"Asoja—!"

There were no convulsions. No screams. No levitation to betray a lingering Deep Dive, no trace of the haze that had erupted moments before.

Only one thing remained.

Her eyes—dazed, staring blankly into the void—were still flooded with gold.