Flux Wanderrift's Arc

Chapter 3 of 18

Flux landed hard on a woven rug that hung in empty space. No floor held it up. Stars spread out below the fringe. The jester clung to Flux's shoulder. The many-headed creature laughed with all its faces, roots still trailing back through the closing seam. Then the seam snapped shut behind them. The flea-swarm was here too, drifting close, wearing Flux's grin. Flux opened their fist. The pendant glowed. Its center showed a moon and stars, and around the rim, silver marks crawled and rearranged. This was the map to the council's fold. But the marks kept shifting. Flux stared. The shapes changed before they could learn one. And the glow was fading. Once it died, the map was gone. "I can't read it," Flux said. "It won't hold still." The jester chattered and pointed at the swarm. Flux turned. The flea-thing hovered inches away. It watched the pendant with sharp red eyes. Its face copied Flux's confusion, then smoothed into something calm. It understood the marks. It had followed the map its whole life. An idea hit Flux. The swarm mimicked. Give it something to copy, and it would. Flux held the pendant high. "Show me," they said. "You know the way. Read it." The swarm hesitated. Fleas broke from its face and swirled around the pendant's rim. They landed on the moving marks. Where they touched, the shapes froze. The swarm was reading, and copying itself onto the map. But copying wasn't enough. Flux needed to keep it. Their gaze fell to the many-headed creature. Beside its feet sat a small boxlike thing that had spilled from the swarm's own body, packed with tiny orderly chambers. A storehouse built to hold the flea-sized world. Flux grabbed the box and opened it. "In here," they said. "Store the reading." The swarm poured into the chambers. Each drawer caught a piece of the pattern. The box drank it in, chamber by chamber. The pendant's glow flickered one last time, then went dark. The map was gone from the relic. But the box held it now. Flux flipped a chamber open. Inside, the frozen marks lay still and clear. A route. A door. The exact fold where the council met. Flux laughed. "Got you." The swarm was smaller now, weakened, most of itself trapped in the drawers. It drifted back, no longer grinning. Flux had turned their hunter into their key. The jester tugged Flux's sleeve. It sniffed the air and pointed past the rug's edge. A new seam shimmered there, blue and open. The many-headed creature reached its roots toward it. Flux tucked the box close and stepped to the edge. They had the route at last. But the swarm had led them here to a dimension with no name, and now the council's door lay somewhere on the far side of a portal Flux had never sensed before.