When Symantha called them down to dinner, Reianna was both relieved and annoyed.

  Loushee had gone back to her silence, but the friction in the air between her and Gerenet-Shr made concentrating difficult. At the same time, she felt like she was on to something, that she was close to discovering something new with her ability, like when she figured out how to toggle object states.

  “Come on, Reia,” Gerenet-Shr said as he passed her, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  Leaving the object as a book, Reianna put it on the table, then followed him down with Loushee behind her. Reianna didn’t have to guess what their conversation had been about before she arrived.

  There was no doubt in her mind that she was the main topic. Had Gerenet-Shr found out that Loushee attacked her after she’d left the Tinkerers’ house last time?

  She’d promised not to hide things from him, but he’d told her he wanted to ban Loushee just for attacking Reianna while he was in the room with them. He’d given Reianna the choice, but she felt that if he knew what happened later that evening, he’d have made the decision unilaterally.

  As they descended the stairs, Reianna asked, “So what were you guys talking about before I got there?”

  “Nothing,” Loushee said.

  “Billiam and Daymein,” Gerenet-Shr answered.

  Reianna’s next step stuttered, and Gerenet-Shr looked behind him to check on her. They hadn’t been talking about her. “What about them?”

  “He wanted to use Billiam to deactivate Daymein as a mage for attacking you, but one, Daymein’s run away from school, and two, he wouldn’t be so stupid as to attack you after I warned him.”

  “He attacked me. I spent last night in the nurse’s office.”

  Loushee stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Her hair whipped around like she was in a windstorm, but there was no sound, nor did anything else move. “I’m going to kill him.”

  “No, you aren’t,” Gerenet-Shr told her. “We’ll remove his mage abilities and let him live his life. He’s still young and deserves it.”

  “He deserves death for touching what is mine!”

  “I’m not yours, Loushee!” Reianna said.

  Loushee’s hair settled and took on a purple sheen. “Did you hear that, Loushee? She hates you and wants nothing to do with you.”

  “How did you jump to that conclusion?” Reianna asked.

  “Hey,” Gerenet-Shr said. “Enough. It’s dinner time.”

  Loushee’s turned back into its natural topaz. The three of them walked into the dining room with an even more awkward air between them.

  Natt and Tinkerer sat at the table, each with a glass of wine in front of them, while Symantha carried the last of the dishes over.

  Gerenet-Shr paused. “Natt?”

  “I’m just having one glass. Things…didn’t go well with her tonight.”

  He frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  Natt sighed and pushed the glass over to Symantha’s spot. “You’re right. It’s a bad reason to drink.”

  Gerenet-Shr nodded, but didn’t smile as he sat down next to Natt. Reianna took the chair next to him, while Loushee took the seat across from Reianna.

  “So, Miss Loush,” Tinkerer said as she sat, “Get any good starin’ done tonight?”

  Loushee was stiff in her seat next to the fiery man, and in response, she just stared at him.

  He laughed and slapped his knee. “That there exactly! That’s some mighty fine starin’!”

  The mage turned her gaze back to Reianna.

  Taking a large spoonful of the potato dish, Tinkerer slapped it down on Loushee’s plate. “Eat up, magey! You’re nothing but skin and bones!”

  “Tink!” Symantha scolded. “It’s 1214. It’s not okay to force-feed women.”

  “Aww shucks. You mean that ended in 1213?” As he laughed, he elbowed Loushee, who blushed as she stiffened even further. “Sorry there, Lou-lou.” He grabbed her plate and swapped it out with Basque’s. “I’m tired of seeing you lookin’ so good, Biscuit. Get fat.”

  Loushee snorted and covered her mouth.

  “Tink! Knock it off, can’t you see that you’re making her uncomfortable?”

  Loushee reached for the potato spoon and put a Tinkerer-sized helping on her plate. “I’m not…it’s been a while since someone’s…” She blushed again and looked away from everyone.

  After watching the exchange, Reianna scooped a reasonable amount of potatoes onto her plate. She wondered if Symantha knew that Loushee had a crush on her husband.

  Reianna had never seen Loushee fail to maintain her composure around anyone but Tinkerer, and the way she blushed at every one of his jokes, Reianna was sure that it was a crush. It was almost like watching Cayelyn interact with Gerenet-Shr one-on-one.

  Symantha was a smart woman; she probably knew.

  Dinner was as lively and jaunty as usual, but Reianna stayed out of it. Her mind kept wandering over the “fix” Loushee problem. After all the weeks, Reianna had finally figured out what the problem was.

  The flickering of Loushee’s numbers, the rainbow background of her dialog box that overrode Reianna’s lilac settings, was all due to the fact that Loushee was somehow cycling through her status boxes herself.

  Each box, each change, was a different Loushee. Reianna didn’t know how so many “Loushees” came to be, whether it was from changing her appearance or some other reason, but she was sure that it was the cause for the shift in her personality.

  The Loushee who ate with them now was the orange Loushee. The girl’s aura and dialog box were both orange. Orange was the “matron” Loushee, the one who acted like an older woman and treated Reianna like her daughter.

  The childish green Loushee not only had both a green aura and a green dialog, but her numbers were the lowest of all of them.

  She hadn’t tried it yet, but Reianna wondered if she could change the dialog box. Could she choose which “Loushee” was there? If so, she’d leave her on blue and make sure that the purple stayed buried forever.

  But even if that worked, since Loushee could swap them herself, it would mean Reianna would have to be with her forever and never sleep.

  “Hello? Kruami to Reianna,” Tinkerer said and waved at her.

  “Huh? What?”

  Symantha laughed. “Welcome back!”

  Reianna looked around the room. Everyone was looking at her.

  “You were pretty lost in your thoughts,” Gerenet-Shr said.

  “Sorry.”

  “As I was asking,” Symantha said. “Did you want any cobbler before you go back up?”

  Reianna looked down at her plate and was surprised to find it empty. She didn’t think she’d been that absorbed. “Not tonight. I think I’m almost onto something.”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “Oh?” Basque asked.

  “Yeah, but I can’t quite explain it yet. I’m going to head back up.”

  “Alright.”

  Grabbing her plate, Reianna carried it to the sink and set it inside before going upstairs and grabbing the book.

  The object Loushee had made had the same problem that Loushee had: it had too many statuses. What Reianna needed to be able to do was to remove or delete one. That option didn’t exist. No options existed.

  Reianna focused on the book’s dialog box, and her eyes flickered over to that box—the one that tore at her soul. She shook her head. She didn’t want to touch it.

  Hovering the book dialog above and below the dagger dialog, Reianna just flipped between the two of them. The interaction between the boxes was like playing with magnets of the same polarity.

  When she pulled the book dialog box up from behind the dagger’s box, at some point, when the book got close enough, the dagger would pop out of the way, as if pushing a North end towards another North. The same happened when she pushed “book” down; “dagger” would pop up on top of “book”.

  She was having fun with it, enjoying the weird sensation in her head of the feeling of the repulsion. Like a kid with magnets, she wanted to hold both ends and force them together against their will.

  Focusing on the dagger dialog box at the same time as the book box, Reianna forced them together. The resistance felt like it was cracking her skull, but that just made her more determined. Squinting her eyes to help with the pain, she pushed and pulled until it felt like the two boxes were “together”.

  As soon as they “touched,” a new box popped up:

  Reianna jumped. Scared that the box would vanish as she could no longer hold the two dialogs together in her mind, she clicked “Yes”. As soon as she hit the button, the pressure and pain in her mind vanished.

  The dagger handle grew out of the bottom of the book, and the book’s cover took on a metallic sheen. The two dialog boxes became one, and Reianna read it:

  Reaching out to the thick book part of the “dookgar”, Reianna opened it up, and sure enough, the contents of the book were still in there. The outside cover was cold, like metal, and was stiff to open. Unlike when it had been a normal book, the cover didn’t fall back closed by itself.

  The pages still acted like normal pages in gravity, but the cover didn’t. Still, she could open it and close it without much effort. After closing it, she held it by the handle and waved it around. The book stayed closed.

  “This is so weird…”

  She waved it around some more, then opened it and read some of it.

  “A dookgar…”

  It was no longer effective as a dagger. Even though there was a small point at the top, it was too short to stab into anything more than a centimeter or two. It was more effective as a blunt instrument than a knife of some sort.

  But still, Reianna felt light, like she was going to float away. She’d done something. She’d discovered something new. Her whole body buzzed, and she dashed to the door with her new object.

  Flinging the door open, Reianna crashed into Loushee.

  “Miss Loushee! Sorry!”

  Loushee grabbed Reianna’s elbow to stop her from falling over. “Slow down.”

  “Look!” She held up the dookgar.

  “What…is that?”

  “It’s a dookgar!” Reianna said, backing into the room so Loushee could come in.

  “A what?”

  “Dookgar! I was able to combine the book and dagger together to make it!”

  Loushee took the dookgar from Reianna and went through a series of experiments with it like Reianna had. “Interesting. So, you made a new state, like I do?”

  Reianna took the object back from her. “No. The book and dagger combined into a single state. So, I can’t get them back out.” To prove her point, Reianna turned it into the mirror, then back into the dookgar. “It only has three states now: the mirror, your listening device, and the dookgar.”

  “It’s interesting and all, but what does it mean for me?”

  “Well, umm…” Reianna stamped on the floor. The girls waited for a short while, then the thumping of Tinkerer’s music rattled the room.

  “People have boxes, too,” Reianna said and explained about Loushee’s states.

  The older girl sat down and crossed her legs. “So, you want to shove all the mes back into one like you did with the book and dagger?”

  “Well…”

  Loushee shook her head. “No. What if it turns me into some sort of freak thing like that?” She pointed to the dookgar on the table. “Or if it combines my personalities in some weird way. Find something else.”

  Reianna slumped. “But I thought…”

  “Can you undo them?”

  Reianna looked at the dialog box for the dookgar. She imagined pulling it apart, tearing it apart, peeling it apart, twisting it apart, any way she could think of to separate two items; she did it with her mind and the dialog box, but nothing happened.

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Then don’t do it to me. I want you to fix me, not make me worse.”

  Reianna nodded, and that dialog box popped into her vision. She looked at it, but didn’t do anything to pull it forward. What would happen?

  She pulled the broken dialog box up above the mirror and listening device, but left it below the dookgar box. Swallowing hard, she pushed the dookgar down to the broken one, but it was a lot harder than pushing the book and dagger together.

  The boxes slipped in her mind’s grasp, and the broken box popped up on top. The dookgar went wild, flicking through all of its states in various colors and different states on different parts of it.

  Gritting her teeth, Reianna squeezed her eyes closed from the pain. A hand hit her back and pulled on her shirt.

  “What. The. Yani? Make. It. Stop!” Lousheed cried.

  Like before, when she’d made the cup go haywire, Reianna flicked her eyes open and pushed the broken box down. The object settled into being the dookgar, and both Reianna and Loushee slumped onto the table.

  Loushee was the first to sit up, and blood trickled down from her nose. “What the Yani was that? What did you do?”

  Lying with her head to the side on the table and looking up at Loushee, Reianna just panted. She’d ended it earlier than the first time, but the pain still lingered.

  “Everything has a broken box. If I bring the broken box to the front, that happens.”

  “Don’t do that again,” Loushee said and wiped her nose.

  Finally able to sit up, Reianna did so, but still slumped back in her chair. “Is your nose okay? I didn’t hit you or anything, did I?”

  “No! Whatever you did to that, the listening device kept pulling my consciousness to it, but it wasn’t complete, and…it hurt. Don’t do that again!”

  Reianna nodded as she sat up, but she lied. She was going to do it again. This time, she firmly held the broken one in her mind’s hand. Gritting her teeth in anticipation, she pushed the dookgar box down.

  Several times, it felt like she would lose control and the broken box would slip up on top, but she held tight, and a new dialog popped up:

  Assuming that she was given another “Yes” or “No” option, Reianna chose the one she believed to be “Yes.”

  The dookgar exploded into two, making both girls jump.

  “What the Yani did you do this time?!”

  Ignoring the question, Reianna inspected the two new objects. The book held all the dialog boxes for the mirror and listening device, but the dagger just filled her vision with a red box that flashed “ERROR.”

  “What did you do?”

  Reianna reached out and touched the dagger’s red box. The dagger—and the error messages—vanished.

  “What did you do?!”

  Still ignoring Loushee, Reianna picked up the book. She flipped through the dialog boxes.

  There was no dagger.

  She looked up at Loushee. “Do you see the dagger around here anywhere?”

  Loushee looked. “No.”

  Reianna’s cheeks hurt; she grinned so wide. “I did it!”

  “But what did you do?!”

  “I figured out how to fix you.”

  Loushee kicked out, sending Reianna crashing into the wall. The wind was knocked out of Reianna’s lungs, and she gasped for air. Purple filled the room.

  Standing over Reianna, Loushee stared down for a second, then ran and crashed through the window.

  Reianna stood, hobbled over to the window, and looked out in time to see Loushee get to her feet two stories below and run off into the night.

  As she sank to the floor and leaned against the wall, Basque burst into the room. “Reianna!”

  He ran over to her and grabbed her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

  “What happened?”

  Reianna tried to laugh, but it just came out as a whimper. She couldn’t believe it. All her work. All her effort. All for what? “I figured out how to fix her, and she ran away.”