Chapter 22: Stranded

Shiori had wondered how someone as strong and muscled as Symphon could have made the mistake of dropping the Reverse Mirror while coming through a portal. She didn’t wonder that anymore.

Going through the portal was hard to describe. It felt like the unsettled fever sleep one might have while sick with the flu. Or worse, like a whole night of painful confusion compressed into an instant.

She was being pulled in a dozen directions, and she only had words to describe half of those directions. She kept her copy of The Last Word by clutching it to her chest, mostly out of reflex.

She couldn’t say how long it took to pass through the portal. Inside the portal she felt time flowing differently on either side. Afterwards, the sensation of feeling time flow slipped her mind like a dream does after waking.

The difference in time passage was probably the most painful transition. The slow, nearly-frozen time on Earth versus the rapid time in Kryptopeda pressed upon her like a soda can on a still road crushed under fast cars.

She awoke on a cave floor. Lying on the stone was uncomfortable due to its hardness. The cave floor was smooth and slick. Everywhere she had contacted the hard rock while unconscious felt bruised and painful.

There was little light, except an orange glow from one direction. As she moved around, she realized that there was a definite slope to the cave floor. Her eyes adjusted to the light.

The light came from an entrance to the cave at the top of the slope.

Shiori found her book. As her eyes adjusted, she could barely make out the words on the cover.

And that was when it all became too much. Painful tightness nearly closed her throat as tears blurred her unreliable vision.

Her first mistake in Kryptopeda was trying to reconnect to Symphon. Perhaps he had come through the portal before it closed. The connection worked, but she could tell that they were unspeakably far apart.

Even through the barrier between worlds, his emotions hit her so heavily in that dark space that she gasped.

Perhaps it was that her other senses were starved for stimulation in that dark cave. Perhaps it was her already turbulent emotions. Or maybe Symphon’s pain and loneliness were so severe they stung even when crossing between worlds.

Her tears flowed freely as she sobbed in the dark. Motohara, no he was Mores, had taken her. She had trusted him, but it hadn’t really been trust. She had been under a spell. But the bigger problem was her foolishness.

In the dark, alone and stranded, she remembered every foolish decision that led her here. This was her fault.

Symphon felt betrayal. The pain stemmed from years of a boy’s pain growing up with friends kept away to keep his and his mother’s Speaker magic secret to the Felthal elders. Shiori had weakened his mother’s magic by learning his name.

A pang of loss from Symphon made Shiori hug herself harder against the cave’s cold. Symphon had lost his mother and leveraged his magic as the reason the elders of Felthal tolerated the dangerous Speaker boy.

But something worse lurked beneath Symphon’s surface pains. Below the pain of being betrayed by Shiori was the pain of his own betrayal. He had only known Felthal. Their distrustful community was the only one that had welcomed him.

He had betrayed his mission as their soldier for a pretty face. Beneath the pain was another emotion. It took Shiori time to realize that the emotion was love.

The stupid boy had fallen for the wrong girl. She had been afraid and distrustful. She had fallen for the boy that brought her to this terrible place. She had fallen under a spell and betrayed the one trying to help her.

Shiori cut the connection. It could have only been open for a few seconds, but what she felt powered minutes of uncontrolled sobbing. The stupid boy had fallen in love with her.

Shiori’s tears mixed with the cave floor slime. Her sobs echoed in the cave.

But even the most bitter and honest tears eventually stop.

Shiori wanted to return to Symphon, even just to apologize and receive his rejection.

The distance between them was more than miles. They were worlds apart. She was a doomed Princess. He was a soldier with a homeland that could never love him back.

“Shiori,” she thought as loudly and clearly as possible. Symphon had said she could open a portal if she mastered her powers, which required discovering her true name.

She tried reading the book, but it was too dark. Her mother had been told that The Last Word contained her true name in a way no other Speaker could read.

She needed light. Maybe reading the book would help her discover her true name.

She tried more names: Honjou, Shiori Honjou, Princess Honjou.

She didn’t feel like a Princess, but that was the nature of being cursed as a Princess in Kryptopeda. She tried thinking: Princess Shiori, Princess Honjou.

Nothing worked.

She was stranded in a strange world, hidden in a cave with no knowledge of what awaited her in the cursed, war-torn world of thoughts and nightmares.

She realized the light was growing stronger. She could see her hand clearly now, including the streaks of tears on the backs.

She could now see the book’s cover: The Last Word by Kawamura.

Should she open the book and read? Where in those pages was her true name hidden?

Iron cold fear froze her when she heard a groan from her left.

In the improving light of day that bled in from the cave entrance, Shiori saw a figure huddled in a corner of the cave.

It stirred. Shiori saw cuts and bruises. It was a man, terribly wounded. The figure turned over, groaning as this disturbed his broken arm.

“Princess?” Mores Praetor asked, concussed and wounded.