Chapter 19: Sigilwarp

Several mornings came and went.

I was still hollow from everything.

Sitting at my desk staring at a black monitor felt like the only thing there was left to do.

To sit down.

Stare off into nothing and do nothing.

I don't know how much more of this I can handle.

Izumi was standing at the window looking at nothing in particular.

"Y'know, I've been thinking," she said, breaking several beats of silence.

"Yeah?"

"About going back."

I looked up.

She held my eyes just long enough to make sure I understood what she was actually saying.

"Together," she added.

Just the one word. No fanfare. No production.

"I'd like that," I said. "This world doesn't have much to offer me anymore."

She nodded.

"It gave you all it could Keizo."

"I did say wherever you'd end up I'd be following you closely, didn't I?" I stood up and made my way over to her.

"I don't need psionic magicka to see your resolve. It was evident from the beginning, Kei." She said, patting my head.

"Well, in that case, we'd better figure out how we're getting out of here." I said, scratching the back of my neck.

"I'll need to access my warp points first."

A beat.

"Your what?"

She moved to the center of the room and opened her palm. Swirls of red light came up above her 
hand — geometric, slow-turning, like it was thinking things over.

"Sigilwarping," she said. "Every mage encodes fixed coordinates into their personal sigil matrix. 

"Locations they've been. Places they trust."

I stared at the floating geometry.

"Fast travel?"

She blinked.

"...Yes," she said. "Fast travel."

As she scrolled, she got more and more pensive and a tad bit troubled.

"Everything okay, Izu?"

"The data is fixed at the moment of encoding." She scrolled through the swirls with two fingers — unnervingly phone-like. "It doesn't update. So a responsible mage audits their points regularly, checks the terrain hasn't shifted and that no structure has collapsed onto the coordinates." 

A small pause. 

"That no one has interfered with them."

I leaned forward. "Has someone interfered with them?"

"I genuinely couldn't tell you."

"...Why not?"

"Because I spent an indeterminate stretch of time on trial and then imprisoned," she said pleasantly, like she was describing a delayed train, "and did not have the opportunity to pop by and verify."

I put my head in my hands. Of course.

She kept scrolling.

"This one," she said, highlighting something amber, "is near the palace district. Forty percent chance we arrive inside a wall."

"Absolutely not."

"Agreed. This one's a field outside Cizera — a lovely spot, truly, but I encoded it during a festival and there's a reasonable chance it now sits underneath a fountain. They were mid-construction when I left."

"You're describing all of these like a dice roll."

"Four to six possible outcomes for most of them, yes."

"Izumi, that's terrible."

"It's honest," she corrected, and kept going.

I watched her face while she worked. She had that look — chin up, eyes tracking carefully, mouth held just a fraction too still. The look that meant the problem was bigger than she was letting on and she was quietly doing the math on it.

Then she stopped.

One point. Small. Tucked away from the others like it hadn't wanted to be found.

Steady green.

"That one," I said.

Something in her expression shifted. Went quiet.

"A forest," she said. "Outer reaches of Magnaria. No roads. No settlements. No one I ever told about it."

"How sure are you?"

She looked at me.

"More sure than anything else on this list."

I held her gaze for a second.

"Pack light," I said, and stood up.

She found me twenty minutes later pulling things off shelves.

I had thrown on my school uniform out of stupid habit. I realized this after getting halfway through tying my tie, and kept it on because taking it off is a massive redundancy.

Right. Moving on.

More clothes. A jacket. The emergency cash from the back of my desk drawer. Water bottle. Two packs of instant ramen, because that was non-negotiable and I wasn't interested in debating it.

"What happened to packing light?" Izumi asked handing me the dress I picked out for her, neatly folded.

"Since when did you turn into me?"

"Put this in there for me. Please?"

And so I did.

She watched me work. Then her eyes landed on the shelf above my desk.

The katana.

It had been up there my whole life. Lacquered with a wooden bracket; never once touched for anything practical. My parents had called it a family gift from someone important and then left for Indonesia before I could ask who.

I reached up and took it down.

Heavier than I remembered.

"That blade," Izumi said carefully, "is not functional."

"Not yet."

She tilted her head. Something moved across her face — the beginning of a thought she was already three steps into.

"Physical transubstantiation," she said slowly. "Magicka applied to inert matter, restructuring the—"

"So you can do it?"

A pause.

"Theoretically."

"Good enough."

I strapped it to the bag and zipped it shut.

Then I stood there for a moment.

The cracked tiles from defeating the mirror. 

Gundam stickers peeling off a now thoroughly beaten and used up notebook. 

A chair that still held the shape of too many late nights. 

Monitors dark. 

Sleeping bag kicked into the corner.

The soot outline where the mirror used to be.

"Keizo," Izumi said. Gently.

"Yeah," I said. "I know."

I slung the bag over one shoulder.

I didn't say goodbye to the house. Saying goodbye would've made it a loss and it wasn't a loss. It was just a thing I was setting down. It would still be here.

That was enough.

"Ready?" she asked.

I looked at her.

"Let's go."