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Info
Farewell, the Witch Girl of the Box
Author:
Ninth BB
Time, locations, characters, events, plots and other content of the article are all fictional, irrelevant to real people and events.
Any resemblance is purely coincidental.Illustration drawn by Bilibili user 【寐言hpyer】, artist’s page
CC-licensed.
The frail opens her eyes. She wakes up in the world, a world as if a paradise.
She stares at the horizon at a loss, shining like shattered glass; wind blows in the vast prairie, swaying the knee-high grasses, along with the iridescence of skies, flowing to the distant.
“Where is this……?”
And after, a soap bubble appears in her palm. She pokes it, yet it doesn’t burst out.
Behind her, bubbles like this are countless, emerging into a prismatic sea, to fly high to the horizon.
It was beautiful, wasn’t it?
——Magic.
The word that pops out from her thoughts. Was it an adjective or noun? She doesn’t quite know. Though, for a place full of reverie, even magic can be understood, right?
The girl tidies her flax-coloured hair before playing on the plain. Pouring her creativity and conception out, she unleashes her ability to its fullest, while bubbles behind her surge out from earth, flying to the skies.
If only those days were unending.
……
As we all know, the Foundation is using thaumaturgy. From SRAs suppressing reality benders, to special containment forces formed of thaumaturgists, they all can’t get away from this technology, the most basic technology, referred as “magic” by others.
Yet, as a system goes easier to operate, it’s more possibly seized by ATPEs possessing divinity as well. According to the theory from Ch. 1, those ATPEs are the easiest one to shape “thaumaturgy” itself as a system, even mountains of the most powerful SRAs won’t work——They don’t jump out of the framework as their existence basis in the theory, not to even mention those many historical thaumaturgy bases——let’s say The Rune——even they were possibly “thaumaturgy” system created by unverifiable ATPEs at the time.
Fortunately, our senior and thaumaturgy forerunner, Dr. Clef, developed and produced a thaumaturgy base, stable and efficient enough for the Foundation to use. It’s based on ██████ and……
……
——About the Complex Interaction to Apex Tier Pluripotent Entities and Meta-Narrative Anomalies, Ch. 2, Thaumaturgy, and its Possessor
Dr.Desiree
The frail opens her eyes. She wakes up in the world, a world as if a paradise.
She stares at the horizon at a loss, shining like shattered glass; wind blows in the vast prairie, swaying the knee-high grasses, along with the iridescence of skies, flowing to the distant.
“Where is this……?”
And after, a soap bubble appears in her palm. She pokes it, yet it doesn’t burst out.
Behind her, bubbles like this are countless, emerging into a prismatic sea, to fly high to the horizon.
It was beautiful, wasn’t it?
After all, you could do anything you could think of here.
???: Dr. ████, you really wish to……?
Sounds of door closing, along with the sounds of electronic lock automatically locking up.
????: I’ve already written my resignation letter, and you’re still trying to stop me?
???: I just want to know……Why?
????: Oh. It’s simple——I am tired, nothing else.
???: But then……
The walking sounds stop.
????: Listen, kid.
????: No matter how much I had contributed to the Foundation, I’m disconnected, from the Foundation presently. My thoughts do not catch up, yet I still have to address many, many problems regarding thaumaturgy.
????: Making it even worse: They all are conscious, that the thaumaturgy base we’re using? Its basis is on an existence, an insubstantial, ethereal existence……yet they still attempt to get me updating this, this……fuck, this mountain of logic bullshit, that’s based on a black box system!
????: All the drugs for anaesthetization have……basically lost their function, regardless of common or uncommon. While those thaumaturgist——known as most of the thaumaturgy user, are all fucking unconscious of that “the thaumaturgy base being used by the Foundation is a black box system.”
????: That was the last thing I wanted to do: Updates to the base have been halted, and maintenance’s now on the Thaumaturgy Department. Continuing to press her——to her, to me…..a boundless torture to we all.
???: That’s……correct, Dr. ████. You’ve just halted the anaesthetization procedure on SCP-239.
????: Those god-damned……people……
The frail opens her eyes. She wakes up in the world, a world as if a paradise.
She stares at the horizon at a loss, shining like shattered glass; wind blows in the vast prairie, swaying the knee-high grasses, along with the iridescence of skies, flowing to the distant.
“Where is this……?”
And after, a soap bubble appears in her palm. She pokes it, yet it doesn’t burst out.
Behind her, bubbles like this are countless, emerging into a prismatic sea, to fly high to the horizon.
It was beautiful, wasn’t it?
No.
It was never an eternal paradise.
——Yet you should’ve known better.
“Beep,” “Beep,” “Beep”……
Terrific dissonance echoes in the air. It’s too synchronized with her heartbeat. She is scared.
“Wh……What’s up?”
A strike of straight lines cross through the whole world. Huge, buzzing, as if lightning.
The bubbles stagnate as well. They either fall onto the ground, or shatter apart even before that.
The girl slowly feels a force of gravity, pulling her onto the ground.
She wants to look up, yet she can’t. She’s already on the meadow.
“No……”
Until she reaches her hand, trying to grab the last lather.
And so the last latherdream of paradise is broken.
The frail opens her eyes. She wakes up in a hellscape, a dull, white hellscape.
She stares at the ceiling lit by the screen, the hand stuck with electrodes tries to grab something still.
Scientific apparatus are set next to the bed, along with thaumaturgic arrays, as if taking her as a sacrific oblation to something, as if using all to hold her life.
A Foundation logo is on her hospital gown. She sees ID badge, and finally recalls all about reality——
Sigurrós Stefánsdóttir
And that, is her very name.
“Ah……eh……em……”
The girl wants to say something, yet she immediately discovers that her throat could only form some simple syllables.
She had long since held unconscious on this sickbed, too long that no one from the Foundation gets to her even when she wakes up.
“I have to……find them……”
The girl tries to get down to the ground, but she forgets that she had been intentionally kept in a coma for ten years——her height had grown, yet her muscles were atrophying. She fails to maintain her balance, then falls straight to the ground, along with the apparatus and bottles.
Crawling as if a paraplegic patient falling off from the wheelchair, she wants to press the “call” button. It was should have been well within her grasp, yet she can’t. The nutrients in her vessel do not replace energy required for movements.
She crawls back to the bed, slowly curls her body up. And cries. And weeps.
She doesn’t know why the Foundation discards her. Those mentors of hers, as close as parents, seem to have left for long.
So then her story stagnates here.
She was forgotten by the Foundation——Even the last wisp of devotion was stopped by her “father.”
At a point, a wish emerges in tears:
“Bring me out from here, no matter who.”
“If only I could make this faster……”
In a certain corner of Site-19, Skuld is washing a metal tube, bloodstained.
This is her first time to smack others into death——though she still left them hung by a thread for those MTFs.
“They must be simply faint……”
At least Skuld thinks so.
And as she thinks so, they weren’t actually dead, with her reality-reconstructing ability.
“Hahhhh……”
Skuld washes her face, and pats herself for a bit to wake herself up.
That weapon specialized for reality bender did damage Skuld to some extent, though pretty much the same as getting punched for once or twice. The damage is still in control.
Then, she walks out with that tube.
And MTFs on the other side of the corridor await.
“——For actual battlegrounds, things’re easier.”
Skuld swings the tube for a round on her hands.
“So let’s make it faster, gotta get our dear princess away.”
Reality bender.
As the name suggests, they possess the ability to alter reality. To them, the established present could be shaped as if a piece of clay.
——And that’s exactly why, for a “future” that has failed to become a reality, it could never be changed.
The frail. Her ability is powerful, too powerful that even the God of Fate is attracted through her wish.
Therefore, her wish, will be fulfilled by fate itself.
“Ahhhh……Help……Me……”
The girl tries to seek help still, from her hoarse voice.
She’s already heard the unending gunshots and shouts outside, until those sounds fade away slowly. She has realized a fact, a horrific fact: Someone killed all the guards just to get to herself.
She thinks of another possibility, rather an optimistic one: Just as the fairy tales, she was a confined princess, and the prince was surmounting the obstacles one after another to save her.
She has to think of this. The girl hides back to the blanket, covering her head to hope no one is onto her——
She musters her courage. When she peeks out from the blanket to see what’s going on, the room is harshly bombed.
“I ask of you, are you the one calling for me?”
The girl sits at a loss, staring at the “prince” breaking in through the wall……
Uh, not a prince.
She’s a white-haired sister.
“Hm……nice to meet you?” She greets. “Call me Skuld.”
And Skuld walks to the front of the bed.
“In a nutshell: Lemme hold you, so we get out of here.”
She does not catch up. In astonishment, the girl who call herself Skuld reaches out her hand:
“Our dear princess, what’re you waiting for?”
“Eh?”
And Skuld pulls her up right off the bat. She rushes out of the containment unit the girl had long since her childhood.
She feels the warmth in Skuld’s arm, a warmth different to any other. No one hugs her even before she falls to the coma, as if they’re fearful of her ability……
But this one’s different——that’s what instinct told her.
She turns around to look at the number plate behind Skuld’s shoulder. The plate reads:
SCP-239
“And so there wasn’t a magic school.”
She reliefs. Yet she feels sad in a sudden.
……Perhaps, her childhood fades out already at this very moment.
“Don’t move, I’m healing you with spells.”
In the camper they snatched somewhere, Skuld scrolls through messages while casting thaumaturgy on Sigurrós to revive mobility.
“You’re laying down for too long, quite normal to have muscles atrophied——Though as a reality be……recon——Ugh, just use reality bender.”
Skuld throws the phone onto sofa in annoyance.
“As a reality bender, an important thing is……um, your heart to believe. It’s magic of your own, so you have to trust hard that you move regularly. That’s how you get out of this unlucky situation.”
Sigurrós remains silent. She simply nods in a smile, and slowly picks up The Little Prince to read.
Then, she glances at Skuld. She wonders what is the “prince” that brought her out from the unchanging “white room” like, she looks only a bit older than her. But Sigurrós only see her pulling out a guitar from nowhere.
“Is this……a guitar? My mentor likes to play a guitar ’bit smaller than this one.”
“Ugh……that’s called an Ukulele.”
Skuld sighs to correct Sigurrós, before adjusting the strings.
Skuld looks up, and asks her: “Any songs you like?”
Sigurrós thinks a bit, and suggested a rather simple one:
“I want……something I haven’t heard!”
“Surely.”
Skuld strums the strings. She begins to play a vaporwave genre, acoustic.
While Sigurrós falls to a reverie, in the dreamful, ethereal music.
“So, actually not a bad person……”
The frail opens her eyes. She wakes up in the world, a world that was once a paradise.
She stares at the horizon that had long since changed: Not the unending light anymore, but a flake of orange in dusk, shining onto her from a sun behind clouds; wind blows in the vast prairie still, bringing a wisp of warmth in daylight; no longer fluttering bubbles above the air, though she could create one or two as long as she wants.
It was beautiful, wasn’t it?
……Perhaps.
“At least, better than an unchanging light!”
The frail smiles in dream, unchained.
“Skuld……where’re we going?”
Sigurrós is a bit sleepy. She sets her head behind the chair of driver seat, while Skuld is preparing to drive the camper out.
“For this……”
Skuld kicked the heavy accelerator before turning back to Sigurrós: