Agatha was unstable. She couldn’t control herself. Everything was a mess. The hijinks with Shayla didn’t help. At one point she mistreats her, and on the other she acts like a friend and comforts her… A mess, both she and the crazy woman. But Agatha felt that she was way worse. She couldn’t even bother with herself now, apathy grew on her like a cancer, yet the moment Shayla threatened to take Christie from her, she completely broke down like a little child.
That scared her a lot.
Ever since that day at the academy’s cavernous basement when she finally unlocked her Sixth Stratum, she no longer felt like herself. Like something had viscerally changed. A type of separation that could no longer be called apathy. For no one was apathetic to themselves.
So she went to the only person she could talk about it with.
“Terráqueaaaaa!” Agatha barged into the room with a mighty cry, and for the first time in ages, she actually found the woman working.
The woman slowly raised her head from the rock she was inspecting and sardonically looked at the petite lithorist as she pushed her spectacles down. It was also the first time she saw Terráquea wearing them.
“This better be interesting or I will fucki-“ Agatha didn’t allow her to finish the sentence as she popped her sapphire out of her necklace socket and threw it to them woman with the unmoored hatred of the sun.
A gesture that didn’t prove much wise as her throwing posture wasn’t the best and the big sapphire now weighed four fractured kilos. If it weren’t for the fact that the Duplicate Control Compact series was basically free for Agatha now, she would’ve snapped her neck a long time ago.
Terráquea was for more intelligent in her management of the agate as she summoned a wall of translucent agate, which upon impacting against the slow-moving sphere, deformed and melted until it completely enveloped it.
First time seeing someone using the Liquify command like that. I guess that’s just to show how every command has its application and uses if people use them correctly. As distraught as she was, there was always time for some theory-crafting. Agatha still had the theory that everyone was using the Duplicate command wrongly because it felt to her like the most useful command ever, and she didn’t think that just because it was mandatory for her.
“Oh,” Terráquea mouthed in excitement after recalling her agate net and grabbing the perfect sphere. Agatha had released all the commands it had so the military engineer was now dealing with the full and uncompressed Sixth Stratum agate. It expanded quickly, but not instantaneously like Summon. “Your agate was already a delicacy when you were only in the First Stratum, but this is downright orgasmic.”
Agatha consciously decided to erase that last part of the sentence from her senses and memory.
“Will you listen to me now?” She sighed, calmly wiping some barely-formed tears. Hearing the scholar’s apathetic voice – of true apathy, not like Agatha’s half-assed emotions – brought her a piece of tranquility she desperately needed.
“Sure, sure,” Terráquea dismissed her with a sway of her hand and grabbed several instruments to inspect the big sapphire. “Though I still do not know why you are so depthbent in me being your fractured confidant.”
The petite lithorist could only take solace on the fact that licking wasn’t on the list of those instruments or experiments. Especially considering the grown-ass woman’s previous words. Which she had already and clearly forgotten and weren’t still echoing in her mind. Clearly.
“I am going crazy,” Agatha admitted with resignment.
“Welcome to the club, girl. It is either due to being a woman nearing your twenties or the fact that you are bound to die by suppression fire,” Terráquea responded derisively without paying attention. “Unfortunately, helmets are not covered by the military. Not that they would do much either way.”
“I am showing myself bare here and that is how you respond?” She arched a brow and crossed her arms.
The military engineer snorted. “If that is being bare, then I am always bare. Imagine limiting yourself to societal standards. What a fractured moron.”
The dirty-blond girl was well-aware that finding answers in Terráquea was a hard task, but most of the time, it worked out. Whether because the woman was actually a knowledgeable person or because she had simply gotten her worries out her system by speaking things that she couldn’t just say to Christie. Well, she probably could, but Agatha felt like if she Christie heard those things, the redhead would love her less. And that wasn’t something she could live with.
So she decided to go with a more impactful approach. “My mind was altered after reaching the Sixth Stratum.”
Now that finally got a reaction out of Terráquea. The woman removed her eyes from the colossal glass orb and straightened her back to look at the girl. She almost looked like a decent and wise person after no longer being hunchbacked. Something told Agatha that Terráquea would be an outrageously breathtaking woman if she showered, wore clean clothing, opened her eyes, combed her hair, and ate a bit more.
“Explain yourself,” she said almost authoritatively.
“You mentioned that our cognition changed each time we increase in Strata, right?”
“I do not believe I said cognition per se, but that would not be fully wrong either,” Terráquea nodded. “Are you suggesting that your whole cognition changed?”
“I… do not know,” Agatha sighed. “Between and after the process I reached the Sixth Stratum I felt… apathetic. I will admit that I am an apathetic person to a certain degree, but now that feeling is greater than ever, I feel apathy even to myself. And I have also been developing paranoia. I have reached the Sixth Stratum almost three months ago and you are the first person I have talked about it. Not even Christie.”
“Hmm, we did talk once about how when one increases the Strata of their agates they feel a mental clarity – their brains retroactively getting more developed – and how it hits you harder as you are dealing with all your agates instead of percentage, but…”
“But what?” The petite lithorist hounded the military engineer as she suddenly grew silent.
“Sixth Stratum, huh?” Terráquea smacked her fingers.
“What?” Agatha grimaced in confusion. “Yes, I reached the Sixth Stratum, what about it?”
“This is a complete fractured invention of a theory, absolute shellshiting from my part, but the Sixth Stratum is a filter. The average soldier gets stuck at the Fourth Stratum, but even the elite ones normally stagnate at the Fifth. There is not much difference there.”
“…because the Sixth Stratum is a filter?” I feel like I’m following her, the azure-eyed girl thought with a hint of pride.
“What? No!” Terráquea exclaimed in actual offense. “Have you been listening to me, you absolute buffoon?” No, I’m not following shit. But I do want to hit her in the face. Hard. If she didn’t get answers from the woman, at least rage was a better feeling than misery. “The Sixth Stratum is no filter, but rather, the circumstances around it. Most elite soldiers are past twenty when they reach that steppingstone. Well past prime learning time. In that sense, they are mentally old. But you still have some development to do. Not that the brain stops developing in the twenties, but like, you know, a non-negligible fraction of the development still needs to be done. Perhaps a bit more than average in your case…” That offended Agatha way more than any insult that had come out of Terráquea’s mouth in the last five minutes. “So you are still young and you are slamming your brain with a sledgehammer. A sledgehammer that is developing you, but still a sledgehammer. Being in the Sixth Stratum is not the upper one percent, it is the upper one percent of the percent. And something tells me that the higher you get, the harder these concussions will get; you should watch out when your Strata increases from now on.”
“And what should I do?” She couldn’t deny that last sentence scared her. “I… do not want to feel this unstable. Like I am no longer myself.”
“Increase mental capacity, apathy, disassociation, and paranoia. Hmm…” Terráquea hummed in thought. “I mean, I am no physician but… would you say that you feel no longer like yourself or perhaps… too much like yourself?”
Agatha was about to hound the woman for saying such idiocy, yet she found that no words left her mouth.
“Maybe… I do?” The dirty-blond girl looked at her hands. They were small like always. “I… this is weird. What is happening to me?”
“Honestly? No fucking clue,” Terráquea snorted, which prompted Agatha to frown at her. “What? This is not my field. And if anything, I am the least qualified person in the whole world to talk about the mind. Anyhow… I have not heard of increases in Strata being detrimental. So I thought that perhaps it was too positive. Your mind grew far faster than your body, and you are unable to associate the two together now. You asked me what you should do, and honestly,” she shrugged, “just be yourself. Time might not heal all wounds, but this one will. And then, when you increase in Strata, it will happen again. You will feel like you are not yourself, but then you will one day look at yourself in the mirror after waking up and realize that you are you. The cycle will repeat, but you will always overcome it.”
“Fuck.” That was Agatha’s only reaction.
“Hey, that is my special word. Do not steal it,” the grown ass woman pouted. “And why that reaction? I was being sincere.”
“Yeah…” Agatha snickered, her eyes a bit teary. “You really were. It kind of caught me off-guard. Thank you Terráquea.”
The woman kept saying she wasn’t a confidant, but if it weren’t for her, Agatha definitely knew that she wouldn’t be the her that she currently was. Only a more pathetic, carcass of a self. And she was thankful for it.
***
The day when they had to leave for the Valasela Estate inevitably came. Agatha considered that she had done a superb job hiding her instability all this time, but the longer time went by, the harder it got. And she certainly didn’t feel like her body was catching up to her mind. Furthermore, the idea of being pressed alongside Christie in a confined space for a prolonged amount of time made her nervous.
What if Christie saw behind the mask and she no longer loved her?
At this point, Agatha could no longer discern her state, if she was feeling paranoia or anxiety. Both were awfully similar and equally harmful, so it didn’t help in the slightest.
“Is everything ready?” Agatha asked her girlfriend after she had carried all the suitcases outside, acting as if everything was perfectly fine. And it should. Technically.
Originally, they had planned to travel extremely light because Agatha’s flying contraption had limited space, but after Christie had greatly progressed on her endeavor of maintaining her sea of stone summoned, space no longer mattered as much. They still couldn’t go all out as otherwise they would risk getting screwed by air resistance, but weight would still be meaningless to them thanks to Control.
“Yes, I think so,” the gorgeous redhead nodded. “So what do I have to do?”
“The plan is simple; you encase us in a hollow oval with a window on the front and then move us upwards with Control. After we are far away from sight, I will summon my agates and add the series Hasel told me to hide. One small platform will go underneath the oval, then the rotor in front. I will also want you to entomb that platform so its thoroughly linked with the whole contraption. Got it?”
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Yes,” Christie nodded. “And what about rests?”
“I do not think we will be able to make the journey in a whole go due to the added drag – not that I think that we could due to now needing your agates – but either way, we should make some stops for you to rest and recall your agates. That will also help in us not asphyxiating in the enclosed oval.”
Truth be told, drag wouldn’t matter that much if Agatha were to use her Sixth Stratum by increasing the thrust of the rotor, but she still didn’t want to divulge that information. Not because of her paranoia, but out of shame. She was thoroughly ashamed of having hidden that piece of information for a handful of months now. And, if anything, having a free command slot would make the journey way easier on her mind. Far less taxing.
Most lithorists struggled with the total amount of commands – and whilst that held true for Agatha too, just in a lesser degree – Agatha was mostly unaffected if she had a free command slot. That breathing room was imperative for her. Even if she were to use two hyper-active five-command series in tandem. She could only hope that Christie didn’t notice how her contraptions were slightly bigger than the last time they had flown together.
“That makes sense, yes.” Christie cracked her knuckles and neck, and whilst it might have been an intimidating coming from a soldier, Agatha could only see it as attractive and cute. “Alright then, I am starting.”
Her girlfriend took a deep breath and summoned for starters a platform of agate on the ground. Carefully, the petite lithorist loaded the suitcases on it with the use of her own platform. Once everything was neatly placed, Christie began to create walls around the structure to enclose it. At that point, Agatha sat down with her legs crossed on the tip of the structure because that would be the driver’s seat. Having seen her, Christie reciprocated and sat down. If anything, she was the only one who needed to curl.
The redhead wasn’t using the Shape command to create this hollow oval, but careful and planned uses of her unique Grow ‘command’. She was aware that it was just instinctive usage of lapiloquia, but it felt wrong not referring to the act as a command. And it was lovely to think that her girlfriend had a command all for her own. Agatha could even tell that the Control command was already active in the agates that surrounded her thanks to her training with inert golemancy. Unfortunately, this year hadn’t taught her anything about animated golemancy, just how to give command to veins of agate. Which had uses, but none in combat. It was mostly a purely artisanal field.
“I am going to start the ascent now,” Christie said calmly once they were fully enclosed inside the oval.
Agatha nodded at her and they started rising. The agatiferous structure was mostly opaque, but Christie had done a good job managing the translucent – or even outright transparent – quartz parts of her stone sea as the front part of the flying contraption was crystal clear. Therefore giving Agatha all the visibility she needed without needing to use a coy Watch command.
Unlike any students’ Speed Control Anchor platform, Christie’s Control command was awfully slow. Perhaps agates were self-propellant with the Control command, but there was a lot of added weight, and the redhead’s agates weren’t that strong or of high-quality on their own. So it took them around five minutes until the academy vanished from their sight.
“Stop, here is good enough,” Agatha informed her and looked back to check on her. Her girlfriend had taken out a blanket.
“Do you want one?” Christie offered with a smile. There was nothing special about it, yet it made the dirty-blond girl skip a heartbeat. How do you look even more attractive with a blanket around your body?
“Er… sure,” she did her best to hide her growing blush as she summoned duplicated agates.
Duplicate Amplify Speed Control Anchor.
“You can now entomb my platform,” Agatha said after her agates were in place.
Christie hummed affirmatively and Agatha could feel vibrations on her butt as agates started growing underneath her. “It is locked in place,” her girlfriend finally said.
“Alright…” The petite lithorist inhaled in a mixture of excitement and exasperation. “Here goes nothing. March forward!”
Duplicate Amplify Spin Range Embed.
Agatha now felt way more familiar with the Embed command after taking the Agatecrafting elective, but that unfortunately didn’t translate into heightened power. Agatecraft just didn’t work that way. Her agate especially didn’t work that way too.
She placed the Anchor agate beneath the oval and the Embed one in front. Or rather, she moved just one as the agates were now locked in a single unit, even if that union was remote. I could technically Embed it to Christie’s platform instead of my own… but let’s better not risk it.
The series caused the rotor to start spinning as soon as it was summoned.
Even though her agates always worked at max power, sometimes Agatha forgot that momentum was a thing and took time to accumulate it. But even then, the top speed wasn’t as great as she would have expected.
“Good news, we are moving,” she said after grabbing the blanket her lovely girlfriend had offered her.
“I do not like how you have started that sentence,” Christie squinted at her.
“Bad news, we are not moving as fast as expected. We will need to take twice as many breaks before we make it to the barony.”
“That does not sound that bad. Even when taking into account breaks, even if they are long, we will be at the estate by sunset.”
“That was the start of the bad news, Christie.”
“Oh,” the redhead gasped. “So…?”
“I just realized I might have a problem finding the estate,” the dirty-blond girl revealed with a goofy smile and a shrug.
Agatha was well aware how beautiful her girlfriend was, but that judgmental look of contempt was the pinnacle of attractiveness. The sunlight that passed through the mostly opaque agate made the sight even more bewitching as Christie was dyed by the soft green and reds, which made it look like her hair and agatiferous eyes had expanded into her skin. I really can’t stop using the word after I learnt it exists, huh.
“And now you realize that?” Christie accused her with her voice slightly risen.
“To be fair, the only test flights I had were in a single and controlled environment. And when I normally fly, I do it at a fraction of our current speed. So this is kind of a novelty. But look on the bright side!” It took Agatha a moment to think of the bright side, and Christie clearly noticed the pause before she continued speaking. “The estate is only twenty kilometers away from the coast! If we get lost, we only have to turn back after reaching the end of the world!”
Christie response was to kick her on the back and then press her with her boot for a prolonged amount of time. Which… Agatha surprisingly enjoyed.
***
Apparently, the result was good news. Christie had packed a map as she had expected some shenanigans, and even if they were flying high, rivers were still easily visible. The big navigable ones at least, creeks were completely beyond them. That allowed them to take their rests at the bigger rivers, which they performed by softly landing, unloading the suitcases, and then recalling all of their agates.
A solid thirty minutes of rest for each hour of flight. They really didn’t want to overexert themselves, or at least, that was what Christie thought. After reaching the Sixth Stratum, Agatha had a lot of leeway with her rough-handling of agates. The rest was only really meant for Christie. An hour was the hard limit for the redhead, and she didn’t want to pressure her girlfriend. Unlike her, Christie would get physical pain from overusing her agates, and she didn’t want that.
Once they had verified they were inside the barony, Agatha slowed the contraption’s speed so they wouldn’t miss the estate. And surprisingly… they didn’t. She couldn’t thank enough her own foresight for departing at sunrise, because now that they arrived, sunset threatened them with arrival. And considering summer had arrived… yes, it was a bit of time.
“The journey would have been easier on our minds if you stuck to the roads,” Christie lectured her once they landed on the estate.
Agatha’s theory was that she was moody because performing the journey this way meant leaving Fran?ois behind and alone at the academy. Which was a tragedy and a nuisance to fix, she admitted that much.
“Yes, but it would have taken way longer,” she answered with a smile as loaded the suitcases on her lithic platform. “And we would have risked getting detected, which could bring trouble on your father’s doorstep.”
“I would prefer that before suffering the remote chance of getting lost, thank you very much,” her girlfriend grumpily grunted with her arms crossed. “I mean, we have only taken like a day to get here. And that was with copious breaks!”
Am I a bad person for thinking that today you looked hotter than ever? Agatha grinned goofily as she knew that she couldn’t say that aloud. Mostly because it meant saying to Christie’s face that her being angry was only a positive for her.
It didn’t take long for them to get spotted. The first one to arrive was Esmeralda.
“How has the journey gone?” The seamstress with the maid uniform asked after coming out of the mansion, her eyes shining after seeing the two girls.
“Improvable,” Christie huffed. Okay, maybe she’s mad because of the whole ‘I don’t know how to find the estate’ thingy. Fair enough.
“Superb!” Agatha answered with a radiant smile.
***
It was really weird having so much free time without a sore butt. They had saved themselves two weeks of dull carriage travel – a whole month with the roundtrip – and Agatha really didn’t know what to do beyond training.
Her training was a dull thing as she tried to push her agates to the maximum with hyper-active commands and no empty command slots, but now Christie’s training was exciting. Alright, it wasn’t. The redhead just made daily physical routines like running, push-ups, pull-ups, and whatnot. But the glinting sight of Christie’s wet skin and hair after a harsh training session of full-on sweat… oh yes, that unquestionably exciting.
The moment she started blushing after seeing that, Agatha slapped herself.
“Why am I so… attracted to Christie?” The petite lithorist caressed her cheek as she curled in pain in her bed. Yes, she had been spying Christie from the window. “I mean; I have always been attracted to her – how not to – but why so much now?”
As of late, every time she looked at her girlfriend, Agatha would get all fluttery and excited. She didn’t worry any longer about hiding her apathy, because she was stimulated all the time.
If you love something that much, you should seize it.
For some reason, the words that Shayla spoke when she had that breakdown came back to her. Not quite to haunt her, but they were impossible to push out of her mind as they remained lodged there. It was the first time the Intaksolfani had been warm with her, and as surprising as that was, she couldn’t deny that, perhaps, they made sense. They just kept repeating on her head.
No matter how many days went by.
***
Agatha and Christie’s shared birthday soon arrived. It was already weird for Agatha to celebrate her birthday, but it was even weirder to do after being in the estate for a couple of weeks now. Previously they had barely made it to the estate for the promised date, so the celebration had felt like a warm and desirable break from all of the monotony of the carriage ride. Yet now… it sort of blended with the rest of the days. Her eighteenth birthday felt no different than the day prior. The only difference was that Miss Diorite made that birthday pudding Christie liked so much.
Agatha also liked it but… three trays of it were more than good enough.
“So,” Hasel clapped after everyone was done with the feast. “I am acquainted with what I should gift my dearest daughter, but to be honest, I cannot say the same thing with you, Agatha. Your mother suggested that I should just give you textiles for you to tinker around, but that felt like an insult to me as we already have a stockpile of them. So I thought that – as technically illegal as it might be – I could gift you another class in litho-“
“Gate command,” Agatha instantly responded, not even allowing the man to finish the sentence.
The patriarch burst out in laughter. “Gate command it is,” he continued laughing. “And that one I am qualified to share, so less problems for me there. We will start tomorrow.”
The lithe and vulpine man clapped again and stood up from the table, indicating the end of the supper. Miss Diorite and her mother started clearing the table with the assistance of Adrien, but the girls made their way to their rooms. For a moment, Agatha almost followed Christie, but then remembered they were no longer at the academy and they had separate rooms.
That made her instantly dunk herself in the bathtub. Yet no matter how cold she made the water, she felt hotter and hotter.
If you love something that much, you should seize it.
Shayla’s words assaulted her away as she had her head barely above the water level. Her whole body was itching and burning. It didn’t help how her body remembered how the dark-skinned girl had pressed her against the bookshelf and drawn circles on her neck with her fingertips. She felt like she was going crazy.
Just be yourself. Time might not heal all wounds, but this one will.
This time it was Terráquea’s voice that echoed on her mind. This one sounded even louder, even if it had been equally as long since she had spoken to both women.
Agatha suddenly stood up in the bathtub, splashing water everywhere in the process.
“I get it now,” she whispered softly. She almost cried from the excitement, in both senses of the word. “My body has caught up with my mind.”
The petite woman haphazardly dried herself, donned a negligée, and rushed for Christie’s room. She knocked several times in a panicked daze.
“Christie, are you awake?” Agatha added a moment later, not without knocking some more.
“Yes, I am. The door is also open, so could you please stop drilling a hole into it, mock sapphire?” Her girlfriend mockingly said over the door, but Agatha couldn’t care.
She swung the door open and rushed into the room. The redhead was prone on the bed with a book in her hands, the place dimly illuminated by a vein of agate.
“What is this about?” She asked without removing her eyes from the book.
“I thought I should get you a present for your birthday,” Agatha said as she stepped up the atrium where Christie’s bed was located.
“It is also your birthday, mock sapphire,” the redhead rolled her eyes. “And if anything, I prefer if you did not make any gifts. You would make me look bad because I have not prepared anything.”
“Right, right. Sorry,” the petite woman laughed awkwardly, her hand pressing on her forearm. “Truth is, I just improvised that to have an excuse. Maybe think of it as a gift for both of us?”
“An excuse for what?” Christie finally looked at her.
Agatha took a deep breath. “I am finally ready.”
“Ready for what? You are not making any sen-“ The redhead didn’t have any time to finish her sentence as Agatha grabbed her negligee by the straps and she pushed them aside, letting the fabric fall to the ground.
“To show myself bare,” Agatha said, now completely deprived of any piece of clothing.
Christie didn’t answer or make any sound. Instead, the book she had been reading made all the talking as it collapsed on her lap, the redhead’s fingers were deprived of all strength and were incapable of holding it any longer.
Patreon to support me and read 20 chapters ahead of time!
