-A little over 2 months earlier, 24th of June, 2018-

Nia Fae slowly backed away from Eliza. ‘Perhaps Thana?’ she thought, taking another step backwards. Following the pariah’s meditation advice, the scary little girl had proceeded to sit down and then, in a cacophonic interchanging between screaming in a mindless rage and an equally insane laughter, started to tear into herself. Teeth getting ripped out, flying kidneys, tearing open her own skull, the complete program of self-mutilation.

Just barely managing to dodge a leg that flew her way, Nia turned around and just walked away. Calmly, she got into the water, crossed through and picked up the white bag John had gifted her in Amsterdam. In an effort to protect the material and the paper cards within, she had left it on the lakeshore, before swimming over to speak to Eliza.

Now that she had told Eliza that she was fine and what she was doing, she had a clear conscience. Albeit with some delay, the news would doubtlessly reach John. ‘John,’ the name echoed in her mind and she looked over to the Palace in the distance. It was just a stroll away. She could visit him right now. ‘John…’ she thought the name again, probing at the emotions that created inside her. Longing, certainly; admiration, in some ways; uncertainty, because of what she did.

Love?

Yes.

‘I can see him whenever I want,’ Nia decided and turned away, leaving the barrier entirely. It wouldn’t be effective to go see him now. Maybe it would please her heart, but she would only delay that she would need to go again. What she had to do, what she had to find, nobody but another blank could help her with. John would have only insisted on tagging along but his current state didn’t allow that.

It was best if she removed herself from the scene. This was not a stretch in time during which she could make memories. She had found people that were her friends, that were even more than that. After all of her life spent without someone to call her friend, it had taken her a while to realize what the difference between those and lovers was. Now that she was separated from John, however, from Lydia and Rave and that pattable Sylph, she realized that she was in love with being part of that harem, in love with the Gamer and those that also were.

Because there was this swirling in her heart, mind and stomach. It was as if blue butterflies of magic swirled all throughout her. They urged her towards the Palace she had left behind, back into the barrier and into the arms of that man. At the same time, they fuelled her desire to go elsewhere, and seek the power she needed to protect that what she had finally found. That thing for which she had fought for Lydia.

Friends. Lovers. Family.

It was time to leave New York again.

____________________________________________________________________________

It took her several hours to get to the right spot and several more to adjust herself towards the next one. Nia had first noticed them in Washington DC, those little spots where the fabric of reality bore something similar to a scar. It wouldn’t bother anyone else, it was doubtful they could even notice it, but Nia felt the presence of the Nirvana stronger there than anywhere else.

The anti-magical force was too gentle for that.

There were a lot of them, scattered across the landscape. They were spaced too regularly and reliably to be a random occurrence. Someone must have placed them there, another pariah. Unless something unknown suddenly manifested, her fellow blanks were the only ones that could wield the power of the other side in such a manner. To use it so deliberately, leaving a lasting mark on the world, it would take a particularly strong one.

A pariah stronger than her, a teacher. Potentially.

First, she had followed the marks north. This had turned out to be a mistake. The space between the thinned areas grew towards the north. Whatever her target was, must have been further south. Once she had figured that out, she had turned southwest and, eventually, corrected towards the southeast again. It was like following breadcrumbs across an entire continent.

It was hard not to get distracted and, whenever she felt like she had made good progress, Nia let herself be pulled off the road by the sight of something cute. A cat, most of the time. A very large one at one point, the kind that lives in mountains and occasionally attacked humans. To Nia, just another cat, once she started rubbing her behind the ears.

Eventually, unavoidably, she ended up in Florida. The path she had to follow narrowed there. Insofar that there was only a single route of the little reality scars she could sense. As for the route itself, it was a winding path that sent her through swamps, cities, backyards and beaches. Environment and weather mattered slightly little to a pariah, so Nia just marched and ran, unbothered by anything, only stopping to pat cute alligators or other such things.

Even slowed by the path and indulging in the occasional distraction, she moved quickly. The closer she got to her target, the more marks in the integrity of reality there were to follow. Unseen by mundane eyes, she ran at the speed of a car to cross the landscape. It only took her a few days to travel all the way from NYC to Miami Beach.

As it usually was, she arrived just in time.

In the presence of the final tear sat a dark-haired woman. It was easy to identify her as a fellow pariah. Aside from the white dress, covering so much more skin than Nia’s own, the woman formed a cut-out in the magical fabric even more pronounced than the actual cut she, undoubtedly, had made. Where she was, magic was not and reality curved away from her. It was for that reason that, despite it being a wonderfully sunny day, the bench she sat on was the only one the mundanes didn’t get close to.

“Hello,” Nia said when she stepped up to the bench. She extended her hand, her face unmoving and her emotions calm. Whoever this was, she wanted to be found, there was no reason to be nervous approaching her. “I am Nia Fae.”

“Nia Fae,” the dark-haired woman spoke her name as if it was something she could taste. “Nia Fae,” she tilted her head to the left, “Nia Fae,” then to the right. Each time she moved her head, her long hair dangled twice. Once thanks to the momentum and once thanks to the large Nevr’est on the other side. “The new Maiden of Null, so they say, so they say.”

Turning her blue eyes towards Nia, the dark-haired woman raised one of her arms. It was mostly hidden under the long sleeve of her white dress, but the tanned hand still reached out and took Nia’s. Only her back, hands, feet and her head were really visible, everything else was underneath the dress.

To Nia, that meant that the woman may as well have been naked. Perceiving or not perceiving that piece of clothing made from non-existence was a choice she could make at any point. Because she thought it would be rude, she kept perceiving her as others would and she felt her opposite did the same.

One shake later, the dark-haired pariah tapped thrice on the empty spot on the bench next to her. Nia sat down on the bench, flipped her long ponytail over the backrest, and just remained still. They watched the brilliant blue of the ocean for several minutes. “They do say that,” the blonde girl finally said, a slight bit of her French accent shimmering through.

“They do say what?” the dark-haired pariah asked.

“They do say I’m the new Maiden of Null.”

“Ah… why did you wait this long to say that?”

Nia went through that question for a few seconds and picked the exact words she wanted to say. “I wasn’t sure if there was anything else I wanted to say in addition to it.”

“I see, I see,” the tanned woman hummed. “Once upon a time, there was a pilot. Suddenly, the engine of his plane malfunctioned. The left turbine exploded, the right one soon followed, and the plane hurled down into the rainforest below. It exploded on impact, but, somehow, the pilot made his way out of the fire and collapsed on his knees at a safe distance. ‘Oh my Lord’ he thought, ‘I’m safe!’

“Just as he thought that, a number of tribal people broke out of the underbrush, wielding spears and gutting knives made of stone. He thought them cannibals and thought ‘Oh my Lord, I’m fucked!’

“That was then a voice from heaven descended on him and said, ‘No, you’re not. Rush at the tribal leader, rip the spear from his hands and kill him.’

“And so the man did. He rushed forwards, ripped the spear from the man’s hand and rammed it into his chest, one, two, three times, then the tribal leader twitched one last time and laid still on the ground, dead. ‘And now?’ the pilot asked.

“’Now,’ the voice responded, ‘now you’re fucked.’”

Nia reached for her bag and pulled the stack of paper cards out of its custom-made metal holder. She hadn’t used them in several days, but she knew that the one she needed was relatively close to the top. It was one she used relatively often around John, after all.

“That was funny,” she spoke her emotions out loud, while holding the card up that had ‘entertained’ written on it.

The dark-haired pariah raised an eyebrow. “You’re an odd woman.”

Nia tilted her head. She didn’t think of herself as overly odd, but if even a fellow pariah said that, there had to be something to it. “Yes,” she therefore admitted.

“I’ve waited for around ten years for someone to figure out to come here,” the dark-haired blank continued. “I’ve waited for over a hundred to meet someone like you. I thought it would take even longer. I left those tears whenever I travelled. Some more intense, some less, so they would be denser the closer you got to me. And here you are, Nia Fae.”

“I am, indeed, here,” the blonde pariah confirmed, as she had nothing else to say in the silence. “I need to become stronger.”

“I could help you with that,” the woman said and got off the bench. For a moment, Nia thought she would walk away, but then it turned out that she was just prowling around the bench. The two Nevr’est respectfully stepped away, to give her the space needed to walk her circles. Her presence on both sides was stronger than Nia’s was on either one, a ludicrous display. “What power do you seek, Nia Fae?”

“The power not to fade.” She could answer that quickly because she had thought about it a lot already. That moment, that terrible moment in front of the White House, when a single magical strike had made her as see-through as a jellyfish, it had made her more afraid than anything else in her life. Not because she didn’t want to go to the other side, but because this one had so many more memories to make.

“Why?”

Another question she had found answers for in the last few days. “I want to keep living with those I love and I want to be a mother,” she said without hesitation, without gestures and without any expression. All she did was shuffle through her deck until she hit the ‘earnest’ card. “There are many reasons I need to keep being here.”

The unnamed pariah stopped behind Nia and the bench and plucked the card from her hands. “Give them to me,” she said, making a demanding gesture towards the remaining deck.

Several moments passed, during which Nia just stared up at the other woman. “Why?” she wanted to know, when she failed to find an answer.

“Because I refuse to talk through cards when words are so wonderful,” the woman responded and smiled a smile that felt warm. “My condition to teach you is that deck. Give it to me.” After a couple more seconds of thinking and staring, the tanned blank continued. “You are a woman with an intense stare.”

Nia only answered after she handed over the cards. “People get nervous around me.”

“Maybe you should smile more.”

“This did not work in the past.”

“Show me, smile,” the woman demanded.

There were several moments of nothing, as Nia reminded herself which muscles she needed to pull in order to create the wanted expression. Her upper lips pulled up, the corners of her mouth stretched to the sides, and eventually she grinned from ear to ear in a wholly overdone fashion, revealing her teeth and a fair bit of her gums.

The distorted copy of an expression ended when the woman chopped her on the head, right into the golden, backwards oriented cascade at the top. “That hurts,” Nia complained, raising both of her hands to her head, to protect the now aching spot against further attacks. Blankly, she stared up. The protest in her mood was only visible in the way she pulled back her shoulders and there was nobody around that knew her well enough to read that.

“The crutch of these cards leaves you untested. Crutches are bad,” the woman declared. “I will teach you what I feel like, and by the end of it, you will be able to get what you want.”

“Is chopping me necessary for that?” Nia asked, still rubbing her head. The woman wasn’t just a more skillful pariah than her, but also quicker and stronger.

“For testing and for motivation,” she responded, as she put the entire deck into the box made for it. “I cannot teach you how to keep from fading,” she said and threw the box into the air. “There is no such knowledge. There are many other things I can teach you that should make it less of a risk, however, and not a final one way trip, if you slay your Queen.” She caught the box on the tip of one finger, then bowed elegantly. “To make the two of us a little less strange, let’s stop being strangers. I am Alice Pleasance Liddell, the name-sharing twin that the world forgot, but one man remembered when I came back from the rabbit hole.” She straightened back up. “Let’s start by working on your smile.”