Professor Squant's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The voice from inside the chrysalis went quiet. Squant waited, notebook open, pen ready to write down whatever came next. Minutes passed. The burnt sugar smell faded, replaced by something else. Something green and fresh, like split pods. The chrysalis shifted again, and this time the tear widened enough for Squant to see inside. Not a transforming body. Not the Founder at all. Just green pods packed tight against each other, spilling out through the opening. Edamame. Normal edamame beans, roasted and salted, tumbling across the floor in a heap. Squant stared at them. The chrysalis wasn't a chrysalis. It had never been a chrysalis. Someone had filled a pod-shaped shell with beans and sealed it shut, and Squant had waited three hours in an abandoned building for vegetables. They picked up their notebook and walked out without looking back. The tavern sat at the edge of the forest, windows glowing warm against the dark trees. Squant pushed through the door and found a corner table where no one would ask questions. They ordered nothing, just sat with their notebook open to the page where they'd written the Founder's first words. Except those hadn't been the Founder's words. Someone else had been in that building, hiding or playing a joke, and Squant had mistaken their voice for hope. They turned to a new page and wrote down what had actually happened, the way they always did. Not because it felt good, but because being thorough was the only thing they still knew how to do. Outside the tavern, a pavilion stood with benches arranged in a circle and a hand-painted sign that read Support Group. Squant walked past it twice before stopping. They weren't looking for support. They were looking for alchemists who worked outside natural law, people who didn't care about what was supposed to be possible. But the pavilion had a bulletin board, and on that board were names. Contact information. People who had tried to reverse their own transformations and failed. People who might know someone who hadn't failed yet. Squant copied down four names into their notebook, then added a note at the bottom: The Founder does not exist. Restart the search. They closed the notebook and left the pavilion behind, carrying the edamame beans in their bag as a reminder to check first next time.