The Bridge Keeper

“Physical contact releases oxytocin,” I explained. “Promotes bonding. Also, it’ll be harder for you to flee if you’re tangled up in a nerd.”

Comet hesitated, exhaled, then slid back into the booth. She lowered herself onto Sergey’s lap once again, this time looking quite despondent instead of jolly-seductive. The astrophysicist stiffened at first, then awkwardly wrapped his arms around her waist.

“You’re not abandoned, not alone on this planet,” I said as I sat down across from Comet. “You can have a family here, be free of your endless mission of murdering planets.”

Comet’s eyes filled with sparks of tears. Sergey hesitated, then reached up and began to scratch gently behind her fluffy, orange ear.

Comet let out an involuntary chuff of air. Her leg twitched.

“Comfortable?” I inquired.

“Adequate,” Comet grumbled, leaning back against Sergey with a soft exhale.

“Right. To business,” I said. “Where are the magic Seeds, Comet? Do you have them on you? Are they inside the sweater’s pockets or something?”

Comet opened her mouth to answer. It was quite obvious from her expression that she wanted to. She was tired, beaten, and I had shown her my power.

“They are—” she began and then fell silent, as if a vice clamped around her throat.

“Denied,” Sage commented. “She needs to ferment in our Linear Aether for a week or two for her pact to come apart, I reckon.”

“I… c-can’t…” Comet gagged, clutching her throat. “It… it hurts… The pact… it won’t… let me…”

“She’s not lying,” Wattica noted, “If she forces the words, her heart will rupture. She cannot even think about it.”

“Fine,” I sighed. “Stop. Breathe.”

Comet gasped, the invisible noose loosening. She slumped against Sergey, trembling. Sergey hugged her soothingly, muttering, “it’s okay, you’re okay.”

“We’ll come at this sideways,” I decided. “If you can’t talk about the weapons, let’s talk about the wielder. Talk about yourself. Who were you, Comet? Before you were a Herald. Before the bells. What was your real name?”

Comet stared at the table for a solid minute as the astrophysicist gave her gentle pets.

“I was…” She swallowed. “I was Solara.”

“Solara,” I repeated, “and where did Solara live?”

“Uggaron,” she whispered, eyes squeezed shut. “I was a… Wayfinder. For many generations, my family tended the Great Bridge that led to the Gardafell Kingdom.”

“Tell me about Gardafell,” I urged on.

“Uhrmmm,” Comet let out a deep sigh. Her voice grew distant. “My childhood there was nice. Magic was… plentiful and the days were sunny. We didn’t… didn’t know that we were all living a lie. We thought the sun would always shine, that the adventurers would always cross from the bridge to the mountain dungeons, always pay my family a toll of seven coppers. One autumn, when I turned seventeen the sun… darkened. Then the seasons stopped turning. The leaves fell… and new ones never grew. The Seers called it the Gray Echo… The Breath of Entropy.”

She shivered.

“Magic started to die. Runes stopped working right. Hexagrams failed. The people… It was like everyone stopped moving forward. Many became obsessed with the past, lamented over it, and prayed to the First god-King for the return of sunshine. As the winter went on and on, many lamented of the ‘Golden Age’ when the Sun was bright and life was fine…”

“And then?” I asked as she fell silent.

“One of the great Archmages discovered the rune of Chronomancy,” Comet let out. “He… he claimed it could send anyone back in time to the Golden Age. To live in the sunlight again. To bring back the fire. It was a lie. A trap. False hope sold for gold to a generation of desperate people.”

“Time travel is usually messy,” Wattica noted from beside me.

“It wasn’t genuine time travel… T’was a cage,” Comet whispered. “When you stepped back into the past the people there weren’t real and… your body stayed in the present. It became a Husk. An empty shell that just stood there, breathing, staring at nothing, starving to death unless someone fed and took care of it. But your mind… your mind went to the Liminal past.”

She shuddered violently, claws digging into the denim of Sergey’s jeans, making him wince.

“It looked perfect at first. You saw the Golden Age. You felt the sun. But it was just a memory loop. A hollow dimension, a shared delusion. There was no future there. And the longer you stayed, the more your soul decayed, the more magic you wasted. And then… Then Conceptoids… infested the false past dreams.”

“Conceptoids?” I asked.

“Hungry things,” she replied. “Non-people. Fucked up holes in reality. Entropic life, sort of like Astral Phantoms. They… hunted the minds trapped in the false past. They eat your memories until you forget who you are, until you become just another hollow shadow wandering the liminal forevermore, until their bodies bloomed with the Gray from within. I almost got eaten by one myself… and swore to never dive back into the past again, no matter what.”

“And your people… did this willingly?”

“They were scared of a hopeless future!” Comet declared. “The present was dying! The crops were failing! They thought if they went back enough, they could stay in the past forever. Or at least escape the end. Dream of something better… My village… half of them became Husks. Lying in their beds, sitting, standing around like statues… drooling, while their souls were being eaten alive in a false timeline.”

“And you?”

“I was a devoted Wayfinder, one of the bridge Keepers,” she repeated, fiery pride warring with the sadness. “I had a strong soul. A bright Spark. I… tried to heal the Husks.” Her voice broke. “Kaerlen… he was the High Warden at the time. My betrothed. I loved him. He swore to protect Gardafell. He swore to protect me!”

Wattica snorted. “I see where this is going.”

“A Voicast came for the capital,” Comet continued, ignoring the Wendigo. “The King became a Husk, bloomed with the Gray mold, lost his mind. Panic set in. Kaerlen… came to me one morning. He said the Mages… found a solution. A way to fix things.”

“What kind?” I asked.

“A ritual of sacrifice,” Comet whispered. “A pure Spark. To jumpstart the heart of the world.” She looked up at me, her eyes wet. “He told me I was the chosen one. That my soul was the only one bright enough to light the way. He led me to the Great Bridge. It spanned the Eldercoss river, a canyon of jagged rocks and white sand. The whole village was there… ones that weren’t husks anyway. My parents. My friends. They were all cheering.”

“They cheered for your death,” Wattica noted.

“I thought we were doing a ritual together, “ Comet sighed. “I stood on the edge, raising my staff. I looked at Kaerlen, waiting for him to join me. To hold my hand.”

The Maned Wolf squeezed her eyes shut against the memory.

“He didn’t take my hand. He looked me in the eye… and he said, ‘For the Kingdom. For the Sun.’ And then he shoved me.”

“He betrayed you?” Sergey whispered.

“There was no spell,” she choked out. “No hexagrams. No mystic void. I fell sixty feet. I hit the rocks in the dry riverbed… I didn’t get to die quickly. My spine broke. I couldn’t feel my body. I lay there in the dust, bleeding out, looking up at the bridge. I could see Kaerlen peering over the edge. I saw my parents. They were watching. Waiting.”

“Waiting for magic to kick back on?” I commented.

“For the Sun to reignite,” Comet spat. “They thought my death would trigger a miracle. Nothing happened, obviously. The sky stayed gray. The wind stayed cold. I watched Kaerlen frown as he realized he’d murdered me for nothing. Then… He told them all that the sacrifice would take time.”

“You were unlucky enough to be born on a doomed world,” Wattica muttered. “One that we failed to reach in time, I suppose.”

“I lay there for hours,” Comet said. “The cold creeping in. The Gray Rot started to eat my body. I was all alone. Betrayed by everyone I ever loved. I died in the dirt… cursing all of them.”

“And then?” Sergey asked.

“Then the bells rang,” she said. “The Sleigh sheared the gray sky. Saint Nikky descended.” Comet’s fingers dug into Sergey’s hand. “She… She healed my broken body. And she told me the truth.”

“Which was?” I prompted her on.

“That Uggaron wasn’t a real world,” Comet said. “That Gardafell was never a real kingdom. It was a ‘Narrative’… a magic, whimsical story created by… a System Wizard. A game left running for too long. The User… the First King and Adventurer we prayed to so often for bountiful harvests… he died before I was even born. She told me that we were all NPCs. Constructs bound to a script, an old book… that had run out of pages…”

“Saint Nikky…” Comet rubbed her tear-streaked face. “She… told me that my fiancé didn’t betray me because he was evil. He betrayed me… As the world was broken, and he was simply a mechanism trying to fix a glitch in the failing, decaying code. He was an NPC following a script.”

“She offered you a way out?” I guessed. “Vengeance?”

“She saved me,” Comet said, “We set the first… Festivus Seed into the riverbed where my blood had soaked the ground.”

I nodded.

“It bloomed. The Great Tree erupted from my death site, reached up across the chasm with… her emerald branches. She consumed the bridge… the village… consumed the Husks… She freed everyone from the misery of the slow, terrible end. She gifted them… peace and joy…”

I stared at the Herald.

“Kaerlen tried to run,” Comet said, a dark satisfaction curling her lip. “The roots got him too. I watched as the pine needles pierced his armor. I watched him turn into wood and sap and See-Mass gifts. He became a decoration. A lovely… ornament hanging from the branches of the silent world that killed me.”

“And you call that justice?”

“I call it mercy!” she hissed. “MERCY! Saint Nikky and Dasher showed me that inside the Workshop, there is no rot. No false hope. We harvest the souls bound to NPC bodies! We liberate them from the doomed narratives. We funnel them into the Sleigh. We give them a new name, a new life. A new… purpose!”

“Which is what?”

“Making toys!”

I mentally pictured a merry Santa’s workshop inside of the sleigh warship. “Do they get paid?”

“No.”

“You do realize that sounds like slave labor,” I observed dryly.

“They get food, family and a home that can never die, never wither away! It’s better than being a Husk!” Comet cried, desperate to make me understand. “Better than dying in a ditch while your fiancé watches! Better than being a prop in a dead man’s game!”

She glared at me, defensive and broken. “You judge me, human. You call me a monster. You don’t get it! I am a savior! I spare them the slow rot. I spare them the betrayal. I gave them all a silent, festive end! I rewrite their terrible ending!”

I remained silent for a few minutes, letting her justification hang in the air. I looked at Wattica, then at Sergey.

“So,” I mused. “You think being a Kobold in a sweatshop, building toys, is… freedom?”

“It is… purpose,” Comet insisted. “We are a charity! The toys made in our Workshop are gated to the goodly children of Omnithornia!”

“Is it though?” I asked. “Or is it just another script? It doesn’t sound like Saint Nikky is freeing anyone, Solara. She seems like the new User. She picked you up, dusted you off, and coded you to be a reindeer instead of a Wayfinder.”

“No…” Comet shook her head violently. “No, she loves us! She rewards us!”

“She bound you with a Blood Contract just like the Frontenachii,” I pointed out. “And she sent you to my Earth, to murder billions of innocent people. You traded a negligent god for an abusive one.”

“It’s not abuse!” Comet cried. “It’s… it’s…”

“It’s a cycle,” I stated firmly. “You’re simply passing the pain down the line. You’re turning other people’s homes into graveyards because you’re terrified of being alone.”

“What else is there?” Comet asked. “The narrative set by the System Wizards inevitably runs out. The Rot… Entropy or other horrific things come for every world. Your Earth can’t escape its inevitable end either. Every dimension dies slowly and painfully. The Workshop offers stability, work, purpose, salvation! Why won’t you understand?! I’m not a monster, I help lost souls find a new home!”