A building fell on him.
But instead of being crushed the building was torn like paper when it hit him.
‘I totally planned that, all according to keikaku’
But the unfolding of reality did not stop.
It did not hurt the way he thought it would.
There was no pain, no burning, no falling.
There was only a strange kind of thinning, like the street around him was being erased one layer at a time.
The bricks of the buildings lost their color first.
Then they lost their shape.
Then the whole street looked like a drawing that someone was slowly rubbing out with an eraser.
Cormac kept his arms behind his back the whole time.
He was not sure his legs still worked, so keeping his body still felt like the safest thing to keep doing or he might lose his accumulated aura.
‘This is fine,’ he thought.
‘This is completely fine.
I am handling this very well.’
He was not handling it very well.
Somewhere deep in his chest, that same tight wire pulled again, harder this time.
It felt like something old was waking up inside him.
It did not feel like new power.
It felt more like a door creaking open somewhere far away, a door that had been shut for a very long time.
He did not know what was behind it.
He was not sure he wanted to find out in the middle of the street.
The girl in the blue coat was still watching him, somewhere between confused and mesmerized.
“𝓝𝓮 𝓲𝓻𝓾 𝓶𝓲𝓵𝓭𝓮 𝓮𝓷 𝓽𝓲𝓾𝓷 𝓫𝓸𝓷𝓪𝓷 𝓷𝓸𝓴𝓽𝓸𝓷.”
She quickly said and fully stuffed the other girl into the suitcase before shouting.
“You!” she screamed.
“Move!
Now!”
Her voice was sharp and fast, the kind of voice used to give orders that people actually listened to.
But Cormac did not move.
Partly because he was trying to look brave.
Mostly because he genuinely was not sure his legs would actually move if he tried.
“I would for you, Madam,” he said with a weird accent, “but not for this… abomination.”
He pointed at the sky and emphasized that last word with poison in his voice as if he was pointing at a heretic.
‘Ok, my hands are working at least, now how do I move my legs without risking losing aura’
The girl’s eyes narrowed.
She looked at him the way a doctor looks at a patient who has just said something worrying.
“Are you an Arcanist?” she asked.
Cormac thought about lying.
He also thought about the fact that lying to a stranger while the sky ate the street around them seemed like a very bad use of his last few seconds.
‘Actually, nevermind, that sounds like a great idea’
“I am much more than that, I am the lover of Arcana!” he said with a cheeky smile.
“The Arcane bows to me like a peasant to a king.”
She looked as if wondering whether she was being tricked, backstabbed, and quite possibly bamboozled.
“Heyy!
What’s happening out there!?” a voice from the suitcase took her out of her stupor.
“…
Nothing,” she said, not looking away from Cormac.
She said it with hesitation and a little sharp, like someone who was wondering whether she should just knock the gentleman in front of her out and stuff him in the suitcase as well, of course that must’ve been just Cormac’s imagination.
Cormac filed that totally ridiculous idea away.
‘Vertin and… Regulus I think,’ he thought.
‘I think the talking fruit has a name as well.’
“Mr.
APPLe’s starting to expire, can we get out now?” another voice came out of the suitcase.
The pirate radio woman, the one everyone had been chasing, was getting impatient.
‘Of course, the apple’s name is apple, I can’t even be mad, I’d name it the same’
“This apple certainly isn’t expiring anytime soon,” a male soothing voice came out of the suitcase this time.
“Oh c’mon, cooperate with me here!” Regulus shot back.
“I am simply making an observation,” APPLe said.
“A very correct one.”
“I’m serious, it’s really dark in here!”
Vertin ignored both of them.
She stepped closer to Cormac, fast, and grabbed his sleeve.
“Whatever you are,” she said, “you are not staying out here to find out the hard way how this works.”
Cormac blinked at her.
For a second, the tightness in his chest eased, just a little, like it had been listening and decided to calm down.
“That’s oddly kind of you,” he said with an impressed smile, “for someone who stuffed a person and a talking fruit inside a suitcase just a few minutes ago.”
“It was necessary,” she said.
“And that is not what is important right now.”
The street kept thinning around them.
The color was almost gone now, and the buildings looked more like the ghost of buildings than anything solid.
Vertin opened the suitcase and pulled him towards it, its lid up.
Its inside was dark in a way that did not match its small size at all, inside it was a girl and an apple.
“Oh, hello there,” the girl said with a surprised tone.
Cormac looked down into it.
It looked, from the outside, like it should hold a few shirts and maybe a spare pair of shoes.
It did not look like it should hold an entire second world folded up neatly inside it.
‘That thing doesn’t obey the laws of physics at all,’ he thought with feigned indignation.
‘Newton must be rolling in his grave right now.
Wait, isn’t this apple the one that hit him?
My memory of Marcus’ nonsense are still so vague’
He did not get the chance to say that thought out loud.
The wire in his chest snapped taut one last time, and the door behind his ribs finally swung open.
For one blinding, silent moment, he felt three separate weights settle into him at once, heavy and cold and very, very old.
Then the world went white.
He did not feel himself fall.
He did not feel himself land, either.
He was pulled in a direction that did not exist in reality.
He only heard, distant and fading, a small floating apple muttering something about how long it will take for an apple to fall on captain Regulus’ head, and a girl’s voice, calm even now, saying one last thing before everything went quiet.
“What,” Vertin said with a frown, “was that?”
The unfolding of reality finally stopped.
London, 1929