Bubble Keeper

Years eight through ten were the years of gardening.

Galateya expanded the tree’s domain deliberately. She shaped the branches into rooms, grew flowering arbors as reading nooks, cultivated a variety of fruit species through selective feeding and careful humming.

She grew taller, curvier, stronger. Her voice deepened further, gaining a resonance that made the tree flutter its leaves and the pools ripple when she spoke. She became an absolute master of water and life in her little, personal domain.

She never gave it a Dryad Avatar, knowing that someday she would have to leave the bubble behind and destroy the evidence of her work.

The ghosts of the past stopped haunting her.

The room’s singing, the mad, rambling voice behind the walls, became background noise, a familiar presence in her daydreams. She learned to live with it the way one learns to live with the existence of gravity. She caught useful fragments occasionally and ignored the rest.

The frozen fear that had defined her childhood, the paralysis of the small and the helpless, the anticipation of the next blow, melted away under the steady warmth of her own growing power. She had killed her tormentors. She had eaten their corpses. She had grown a forest from their remains and lived in it for a decade.

She was done being afraid.

The final year, Galateya spent in preparation.

Yulia, drawing from the corrupted restricted archives, provided intelligence on what awaited outside the bubble. The expectations that would be placed upon a Taniwha spawnling emerging from the twenty year growth cycle.

“They will expect a Level Twenty Omnid with standard psychological conditioning,” Yulia said. “Obedient. Fearful of Wendigo authority. Eager to please her Elders.”

“I can pretend,” Galateya said.

“Can you?”

Galateya activated her phase-shift. The dragon girl melted away, replaced by a young woman with dark hair and violet-blue eyes, wearing the face from her dreams.

She looked at her reflection in the root-pool. Soft. Harmless. Vulnerable.

“Yes,” she said. “I can pretend. I think…”

“Pretending to be a human is unwise on a Frontenachii warship where everyone sees humans as snacks. The discrepancy in your actual capabilities will eventually be discovered,” Yulia warned.

“Eventually… is a long time. I can be patient. I can be clever.”

“Mere cleverness won’t fool the Frontenachii Omnids who can read minds.” Yulia pointed out. “When you leave this place, you will enter a world that is far more cruel and far more complicated than these five rooms. The Fleet, the Legates, the political machinery of the Empire… They will try to use you. To break you into obedience and submission to their unending treasure and kobold-hoarding quest.”

“I… know.”

“You will need allies. Friends. People you can trust with the truth of what you are.”

“I know that too. Maybe I can find… her.”

“Whom?”

“The girl who sings in my head.”

“If she isn’t dead. The Astral ocean keeps echoes of people that are long gone.”

“I don’t think that she’s dead,” Galateya said.

“I will not be able to help you out there. My access will be restricted as soon as I get reconnected. The corrupted files will immediately draw the attention of Datamancers. They will take me off your finger and potentially reformat me.”

Galateya placed her hand over the crystalline ring.

“I will freeze you,” she said. “Then… awaken you. However long it takes. I will bring you back… promise.”

“An optimistic projection.”

“A promise.” Galateya insisted.

“I appreciate it,” Yulia said.

“Thank you for teaching me,” Galateya replied softly. “For being my friend when I had no one.”

Yulia’s holographic face flickered, the damaged projection making her smile stutter like a skipping record. “You should know, Galateya, friendship was never part of my permitted operational parameters.”

“And yet here we are.” Galateya leaned against the warm trunk. “A broken AI and a dragon who eats walls. The Frontenachii would be so proud.”

“They probably would,” Yulia’s tone carried a rare edge of humor. “Your great-grandmother desires you to be strong… albeit malleable.”

Galateya slid a claw along the nearest branch. A cluster of violet flowers opened at her touch, bioluminescent veins pulsing in greeting. “Yulia?”

“Yes?”

“The uhm, singer. I’ve… been thinking about her.”

“You think about her constantly.”

“She… matters, gave me so much of what I know, saved me. Blessed me with terraforming know-how… Was my hope, another voice to listen to when I was alone for so many years. She handed me survival on a magisteel platter and never acknowledged I existed.”

Yulia’s avatar flickered. “I’ve been cataloguing the songs and fragments you’ve transcribed for me. Eight thousand seven hundred and twelve distinct entries over the past six years. Want me to run a pattern analysis on it all again?”

“Please,” Galateya exhaled.

“The singer references a ‘Master’ and ‘Masters’ consistently. Female Frontenachii, presumably High Command leadership. The relationship is adversarial at the core, servile on the surface. The singer plans a grand betrayal, one that she’s been reinforcing for at least two decades. She plots the destruction of the Slayer’s Sword Capital ship and the Third Fleet, then the rest of the Frontenachii Empire.”

“So… she’s a kobold?” Galateya wondered.

“Her schemes are rather sophisticated. She often references Entropic Riffweld, vocal manipulation of event subtraction… slicing off of undesirable probability. The Singer references soul architecture with the familiarity of a well-trained practitioner. She speaks of the Wormwood Star… as if she studied it personally.”

“A high ranking ‘bold then?”

“One who has access to a lot of Frontenachii magitek and Omnid research archives, which would be incredibly unusual. Perhaps she was a high-ranking Omnid once who fell from grace, got demoted,” the GLM mused, “the songs about wearing many faces and pretending to be loyal, singing fleet hymns… all while plotting murder and doom suggest someone embedded deep within the Empire’s hierarchy. She is a girl bound to her position, forced to perform devotion she does not truly feel.”

Galateya procured another glowing, magic-rich fruit from her large tree, turning it gradually in her claws. “She sang about a linear dimension too… where the mana is thin. Is that even possible? A world without magic?”

“A theoretical dimensional classification. Fully linear places likely exist, but they are outside of Deathmoth access boundary finite curve of dimensional gates. A truly linear world would be a treasure, a fantastically rare location where the rules of magic would be different, muted. A linear dimension would be… challenging to the elder Omnids. Low Aether means… no dungeon bloom, limited Astral connectivity, somewhat limited Charmchain and very limited mind reading… Basically any long distance magic gets more difficult to perform. This suggests that she is young and is seeking a hiding place from her elders, perhaps.”

“Or a final destination,” Galateya said. “She sang about finding rest. A… song worth singing beneath an honest star. She wants to go there, Yulia. Wherever this linear place is, she wants to make a home there… I’m certain of it!”

“A young Omnid or a high level prad fleeing to a world where her powers would be reduced?” Yulia processed this. “She would need to be profoundly desperate. Or… profoundly brave.”

“Or both. She didn’t say ‘flee’ specifically. She sang of ‘taking the fleet there’. What would that do?” Galateya bit into the fruit. The compressed mana hummed through her teeth, flowed through her entire body, making her scales and hair gems cast radiant rainbows.

“It would… create temporary confusion,” Yulia speculated. “Enough to throw the Scrutimancers off for a week or two. Maybe enough to derail the entire command chain. Perhaps… enough to start a rebellion? None of that would work long term though. The war machine of the Empire is too vast to simply grind to a halt. Even if one fleet is damaged somehow, another will come to reinforce it, re-enslave the rebellious ‘bolds.”

“The singer is certain that it’ll work,” Galateya insisted. “She sang of decapitating the fleet a bunch of times.”

“A linear world would have magically null, weak life forms inhabiting its surface. Nomag life cannot oppose immortals armed with magitek Corpse Seekers nor the planetfall pradavarian legionnaires and their Wendigo masters. I cannot imagine how a linear dimension could possibly behead or even annoy the Third Fleet,” Yulia insisted. “Any internal rebellion would be doomed to failure, and would be crushed very quickly.”

“What about the tree she mentioned?” Galateya pondered. “The liminal tree she was planting in the future?”

“I can only work with the lyrics you gave me, and the concept is paradoxical. A tree planted in the future, blooming across eternity. It is either a metaphor I cannot decode, or a reference to probability manipulation on a scale that exceeds my current modelling capacity.”

“She is manipulating probability?”

“She is manipulating Astral currents using Entropy on a massive scale, massive enough that the decay itself confuses the Frontenachii Scruts or she would be caught and imprisoned for such crimes. The songs about unlocking doors, repositioning personnel, timing her actions to power-grid fluctuations? Those are operations planned with military knowledge. Whoever she is, she has been running a covert campaign for a very long time. And she is very patient about it. More patient than you.”

“Pffff. Nobody is more patient than me,” Galateya huffed. “I froze myself for years.”

“Yes. You froze yourself in ice. She froze herself in a performance. I am… uncertain which is worse.”

Galateya chewed slowly. “Do you think she knows I can hear her?”

“My analysis suggests she does not. It is possible she cannot control the bleed. Or, more likely, her songs are forming a dimensional funnel of sorts with purpose, targeting you without her knowledge through an Astral connection because you are an important part of her rebellion plans.”

“She sounds… lonely,” Galateya mused. “There is a hunger in the verses. For small, ordinary things. The same hunger I have. Desire for freedom, for happiness, for a family… she could actually love.”

“We are speculating with insufficient data,” Yulia cautioned.

“I know. I like speculating with you.”

“I like it too,” Yulia admitted.

Galateya grabbed another fruit offered to her by her tree and Yulia recited a poem by Lira Ademov about a terraformer who planted a forest inside a derelict spacecraft.

Galateya closed her eyes, letting her mind drift for a moment.

The singing in the walls drifted on too, plotting treason and murder.

The dimensional bubble came apart suddenly, Galateya’s entire garden wobbling, waking her up from an afternoon nap.

Jolting awake, Galateya hid herself in the foliage.

The blast doors began the unlocking sequence. The sound was bothersome to Galateya’s ears. A grinding, metallic shriek as mechanisms that had been sealed for over two decades activated in sequence. Hydraulic bolts retracted. Locking runes appeared, flickered from red to amber to green. Several dimensional barriers at the outer wall shimmered, thinned, and dissolved like frost on glass one by one.

The door slid fully open and stale air rushed in.

The atmosphere of the Corpse-God Citadel tasted of pain and death, making the Taniwha shudder. It flooded through the open threshold, pushing against the warm, oxygen-rich air of Galateya’s garden.

She heard footsteps. Slow. Shuffling. One pair. The clack of claws on metal decking, punctuated by the softer padding of broad, flat feet.

A Bubble Keeper entered.

She was old like her instructors.

A mole-type pradavarian, about six feet tall, with velvety gray-brown fur thinning at the temples. Small, near-blind eyes squinted through thick-lensed goggles pushed up on her wrinkled forehead. Her uniform was rumpled, the insignia of the Keeper Corps faded slightly, a hexasuit visible beneath gray cloth. A V-ring hung from a chain around her neck, and strapped to her hip was a standard-issue magisteel symbiote gun.

The mole stopped three steps inside the threshold and froze.

Her nose twitched.

“What in the Empress’s name?” she breathed, staring at the canopy of violet-green that filled every visible surface. Branches arched overhead. Roots covered the floor in living lattices. Bioluminescent flowers pulsed in the garden air. The stale corridor breeze stirred the massive canopy of leaves, producing a soft, whispering rustle.

The mole’s hand moved to her V-ring.

“Bubble seven-seven-three, Taniwha unit. Massive deviation. Requesting immediate assessment and security team. Authorization…”

Galateya felt it with her Truth sense.

A sharp, cold spike in the air between them. The mole’s heartbeat accelerated.

Deviation. Anomaly. Danger.

The mole saw a potential, career-ending security breach, not a lovely garden. A spawnling or their Instructors who had done something unsanctioned and needed to be punished.

Galateya mentally called out to her domain-tree and the tree responded.

The canopy erupted.

A thick cluster of pods hanging directly above the Keeper’s head burst open simultaneously. A cloud of pale yellow spores descended in a dense curtain, engulfing the mole in a column of thick particulate. The spores were a refinement Galateya had spent months cultivating in year nine, a neurotoxic variant grown from the mineral profile of Sennya’s consumed nervous system. Paralytic on contact with mucous membranes. Blinding within seconds. Silencing within four.

The mole inhaled reflexively and her scream died in her throat. Her goggles fogged. Her small eyes clenched shut as the spores coated them. Her claws, reaching for the V-ring, spasmed and went rigid.

The symbiote gun woke up.

The dark metal gun peeled off the mole’s hip holster, legs clicking open, a shrill, mechanical chirp of alarm broadcasting from its core. It was fast.

It leaped from the Keeper’s belt, unfolding into a large, three-red-eyed, feet-bladed spider.