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Scarab threw himself down the stairs, nearly tripping over himself as he switched planes faster than his mind could catch up.
Prismo was gone.
His few weeks of adjusting to being two-dimensional, learning how to navigate the time room, and in general being calm and collected given his situation were thrown out the window. Prismo was gone. He’d simply vanished, barely a sound of recognition to the event—
“Prismo?” he called. His form was far too restrictive and his voice did not carry as far as he needed it to.
An infection, his mind told him, as he bolted across surfaces in the time room’s innards, leaping from plane to plane. His mental map of the labyrinth was hard to recall with the rush of adrenaline, but if Prismo was gone, then something must have happened to his dreaming body, and that drove him on. Something had gotten into the time room. An invasion, a parasite, a vile thing to disrupt the balance. Even his own body was at risk.
He smelled it before he saw it: Sulfur. He took a sharp turn down a hall. Voices echoed down the hall—one sounded distinctly like Prismo, but ragged, loud but of breath. Was he injured? He didn’t even know he could be severely injured.
But he was significantly more killable now, he recalled. If it’d happened before (and it had happened before), it could happen again..
His projection stuck to the wall of the room as it opened up. The first thing he registered was blue embers dying out in the air. The second thing was—a human? A man, pressed back into a corner behind the smoldering remains of the bed he was meant to be asleep on, eyes wide, clutching his hands to his chest. He was old, covered by a gown that nearly touched the floor. He wasn’t even looking at Scarab, but far above them both.
“What the—”
The wall Scarab was on exploded, spitting him out on the floor.
“Another?” a voice hissed. He looked up and saw a figure curled over on many legs, segmented body halfway up the wall and grappling the ceiling. It growled out a tongue of blue flame. Ah, sulfur. Glittering yellow eyes turned in their sockets to focus on Scarab.
The panic froze over into a collected ease. A threat was still a threat, but he’d eliminated interlopers pre-wishmaster, successfully contained criminals, and if required, he’d killed them. He could do it again. “And you are?”
“Y’glath’in, Devourer of Magicks, Spawn of Gn’ylin—” The centipede contorted over itself. Veins of blue glittered down its body in waves with every breath.
“Yes, a very prestigious bloodline, I’m sure,” he murmured. Slowly, he stepped along the floor, away from Prismo’s host body. The body in question was doing a very good job at not making a break for it when he had the chance. Maybe it was a smart move, staying still in that corner, hoping he didn’t draw the intruder’s attention back.
“You disrespect my name,” Y’glath’in snapped, “If I wasn’t going to kill you already, I would want to now. You hoard this magic to yourself, however many there are—”
“Just us,” he said matter-of-factly. It followed him from above, every single one of those beady eyes laser-focused on him. “I take it you’re not here to make a wish?”
“No!” It hissed, infuriated by his words. Its mandibles extended and clicked together. If he had better control over his face in his current form he would’ve echoed the gesture. “I am going to rip you to pieces and drink your blood!”
It dropped down onto him, which would’ve been very effective if he wasn’t a shadow. Every surface of the room was either crumbling or, at the very least, scratched by dozens of tiny legs or dusty from being burned. Y’glath’in raised its head and snarled fire. Invulnerable to it or not, it singed and slightly warped the surface he was in, spurring him to take shelter to the wall.
Oh, how did Prismo do that thing? It was hard to focus while staying on a flat-enough surface to exist on. Scarab’s focus flickered to a split second to the host—still there, good—and then to the ceiling. Not that anyone could tell, with his face so impassive. The room rumbled.
The intruder twisted over itself when the floor shook. Wrong plane, Scarab thought. How Prismo navigated the hellish maze, he had no idea. But there weren’t exactly options for getting rid of the threat. So he recalled however Prismo had tried to explain how the place worked, how it bent to the will of the wishmaster, as their hub and shelter. Bend, he willed.
The ceiling buckled.
Y’glath’in raised its head. “What—”
And the ceiling directly above it collapsed.
Exoskeleton and flesh became more physics than biology as the threat was neutralized. The thin space between the wall and fallen ceiling became coated in a sizzling blue hemolymph, Scarab himself included.
He paced away from the mess and wiped his hands off on his legs. But he was still… well, dry wasn’t the word for the nothing-texture of his body. But lingering on the sheer amount of dead-person-gunk that’d covered the surface he was on made him shudder. Filthy.
He glanced at the rubble. Yes, that thing was most certainly dead and still. He could… dispose of it? Later. That was a problem for his future self to handle.
The current problem had shuffled out of hiding and now stood a short distance away from the smoking remains.
“Prismo,” he began. That was Prismo, wasn’t he? At least, a version of him. He’d even spoken to this Prismo, before he became wishmaster and fell into eternal sleep. But that was so long ago, memories were more feelings than scenes. Namely, an envious fury edged into his mind when he looked at that face.
The man, maybe human maybe not, glanced over at him. He was… short. Scarab became uncomfortably aware of his own size, tiny compared to wishmaster Prismo yet taller than the average human, and how he now loomed over Prismo’s body.
“Are you injured?” he settled on. He looked fine.
Prismo’s gaze shifted from one side of the room to the other. “Um, no.” That was Prismo’s voice too, plus a few years. It was still rough with sleep. “That was very cool, what you did back there, you know. Kind of saved my life.”
“Yes, that was the plan.” He paused despite himself. How strange to say aloud. Well, he reasoned, he couldn’t just let his boss die on him. That would get him in boiling hot water.
“The noise woke me up.” He rubbed at his arm through his robe. Glob, that was weird, to look at him and talk to him. A waking snapshot of the past. Prismo tipped his head. “Where are we? Who are you?”
That pang of something was almost stronger than the confusion. The first question was significantly easier to answer. “We are in the time room.”
He stared at him blankly. Oddly, this Prismo had deep, brown eyes, contrary to his wishmaster body’s striking, uncannily blue eyes. Then again, he didn’t have a lot of pink on him, either. Maybe it wasn’t so strange that Scarab ended up blue somehow. “...that really doesn’t clear it up.”
“The time room,” he repeated, with slightly more emphasis on each word. “You know, where your dream carries out his wishmaster duties?”
“Oh right, I’m a wishmaster.” His eyes widened a bit. Scarab pressed his hand to his face. He was just as big of a fool as his Prismo. “...but yeah, no, I have no idea where we are.”
“Seriously? Did management not give you a debriefing?” he scoffed. They were more incompetent than he thought. There was a twinge of worry, though. The time room did exist when Prismo became wishmaster, hadn’t it?
“I—it’s been a long time, and I’m still tired, you can’t expect me to remember everything.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. Paused. Ran his hand down his face. “Huh, the beard is new. How long has it been?”
Scarab paced around the perimeter of the room. The place where Prismo had been asleep was in shambles, burnt and splintered. “Long enough for specific numbers to have become meaningless. You need to sleep again.”
“After that ?” He laughed nervously. He had Prismo’s laugh. “What if there are more?”
He blinked. “You have a point. I’m surprised.” He gave the room a once-over and circled it, moving back to the entrance. “I need to find where the interloper got in, in the first place. This may take time.”
“Can I come?” he asked, already following with a mystified look in his eyes, like he was a starry-eyed mortal and not an immortal being with responsibilities.
“What? No. Why would I let you accompany me? You do not know this place, and as you said, it may still be unsafe. At the very least this room is mostly sealed.”
“You broke a hole in the ceiling.”
Scarab inhaled sharply. He looked up. Beyond the crater was another ceiling, another room, another part of the infinite place. “My point still stands.”
Prismo took a few steps out of the room, leaving Scarab to stew in his annoyance. Who did this man think he was, disobeying him? “You still haven’t told me who you are,” Prismo said, looking back at him.
So he truly did not recognize him. “I am the Scarab.”
“Oh! That sounds familiar.” He ran his hand through his beard. “We’ve talked.”
“Yes,” he said. How much did he recall?
“Are you…” he trailed off in thought. Scarab walked alongside him. “Hm.”
“I’m—”
He waved him off. “No, no, I’ve got this.”
“You do not.”
Prismo glared from the corner of his eyes, but he was smiling. “We must be friends,” he guessed.
“Hm.”
Prismo stared hard at him. Squinted. “Dati—”
“No.” He would not let him even speak the word. Nor let him see how he reeled.
He had the gall to look a bit put out. “Okay, I’m out of ideas.”
Damn. That meant he had to actually explain himself. “I am… also a wishmaster.”
He lit up. “Oh! I didn’t know there would be more. That’s really cool. Were we coworkers?”
He didn’t know what reaction he expected, but it wasn’t that. He sure as hell wouldn’t want any other wishmaster if he’d gotten the position, but then again, Prismo was Prismo. “...sure. Yes.”
Prismo lessened the already thin space between them, smiling. “When did you become a wishmaster?”
Scarab ignored him for a minute, to get his bearings. The hall split off at many points, and kept turning in on itself. He picked a branch to go down. But other than them and the faint hum through the walls, it was quiet. “Very recently.” He didn’t know how much intel he had to give Prismo. Was this Prismo still his boss? Even if he didn’t know he was his superior? “I am still learning.”
Prismo watched as he peered around the next corner. The floor dropped away sharply into a faint purple fog. “...am I your teacher?”
“...your dream is, yes.”
His voice softened. “How is he?”
An alien feeling washed over him, and he couldn’t even begin to comprehend how this Prismo felt. “...he has been the only wishmaster for many millennium. People love him, but personally I can’t comprehend why, for he is extremely lax with rules, he gets away with so much, Glob, he even made his own universe. It got canonized in the end, but to do that in the first place—” He bit his tongue. None of this was useful information. “He is fine. I think he is fine. He would much rather, in his terms, hang out, than actually teach me how to do my job here but I suppose there is no rush, we’ll be here forever.”
He couldn’t read Prismo’s expression. He stared a lot, unblinking. “He’s kind, though, isn’t he?”
There was something in those eyes impossibly old. Hope, but also worry. He… perhaps Scarab had not done Prismo the wishmaster justice when describing him to his body. Prismo, the Prismo before him, just wanted to do good in the world, and he wanted to know that his dream was carrying out that core duty.
“Insufferably so,” he spat. He glowered out into the void. He couldn’t look at that Prismo without that sickening feeling rolling through him. “He cares too much. About everything.”
“I don’t see how that’s so bad,” Prismo said quietly. “It’s why I became the wishmaster. So I could make people happy. There’s a lot out there people feel so strongly about. And I suppose I feel strongly about those people.”
That glimpse into Prismo’s origin felt… strange. That was the man he’d lost his chance to become the wishmaster to. There he was, the better wishmaster.
Prismo splayed his hand over the wall, over Scarab’s arm. He couldn’t feel it. “That’s why you became a wishmaster, too, right?”
His soft smile wavered when Scarab pulled away. “...let us continue.”
He turned on his heel and reentered the labyrinth. When Prismo didn’t immediately follow, he slowed. He did not look at him. He just waited. And soon enough, he heard his footsteps trailing after.
The constant hum of energy in the walls wasn’t loud enough to drown out his thoughts. So he focused on his sweep, and picked up the pace. He just had to find where the weak point was and fix it. However Prismo fixed his security issues. He’d figure it out; it’d be a show of his prowess. Proof he was learning and worthy of his position as a wishmaster, even a lowly one.
The time room made no sense, geometrically. It wasn’t called the space room. So he was forced to follow the winding corridors in nonsensical directions, until they looped in on themselves or opened up into what were practically atriums.
He stops at one of said open, vast rooms, with bridges and walls cutting through the space. He looked over. Everything looked alright. If he were a massive centipede, how would he navigate the space? How would he intrude?
“Um—Scarab? That was your name, right?”
“Yes?” He turned.
Prismo lagged behind. “I’m—I’m tired.”
Of course he was. He may not have been mortal but he was meant to be asleep. Scarab sighed and waited for him to catch up. He looked exhausted. He truly was not meant to be awake for so long. “Well, then, you should have listened to me and stayed behind.”
“You said it was dangerous,” he murmured. “Besides, um, there’s not really a bed anymore.”
“Sleep on the floor.”
Prismo gave him an incredulous look. The corner of his mouth twitched up in something almost a smile. “You’re very strange.”
He bristled. Was he mocking him? “It’s not strange to want to keep order. You are never meant to wake up.”
“Is there a rush?”
He paused. Not that he knew of. He'd begun to feel whenever a wishmaker entered the time room, a slight change in the humming frequency; Prismo was more attuned to it than he was, but he would've surely felt a change. There was no hurry. He looked away. “Be quiet.”
He was grinning, now. Insufferable. “Whatever you say.”
He glowered. A slight twitch of his hand to a cane he didn’t have anymore and even the walls shuddered with his annoyance. Something flashed in Prismo’s expression, a fear echoing that of when he’d first run in, when he was looking at the assassin.
The walls went still. Not a single crack in the architecture. “I will not harm you.” He’d never bring mortal harm to Prismo.
He was his boss. He’d be in terrible trouble. He shouldn’t have even frightened him. The gnawing in his heart was instinct telling him of his mistake.
“Alright, yeah, you just…” Prismo rubbed the back of his neck. “You feel very strongly about your job. That’s—that’s good.”
“One would think.” He glared down at the fog and bridges and doorways, walking along the wall. There was quite a ledge, leading to a bridge spanning across to some far other wide. “Sometimes people don’t appreciate the effort I don’t put into my work. You wouldn’t understand. Everybody loves Prismo.”
“You said it yourself, you haven’t been a wishmaster for long.” Prismo stepped onto the bridge, looking out. “Prismo’s had time to adapt to it all. He knows the risks, he’s… seen more.”
“You are correct but—” he sighed tersely. “You don’t know.”
“I don’t. But… I’ve been napping for a long time, so he’s been granting wishes for a long time.” He shrugged, yawned, and looked up. “Oh. Weren’t you looking for that?”
“Looking for—” It took a second to tilt his head and look up, but. Ah. There was a hole in the ceiling. Faintly, he saw the outside of the time room: Sparkling stars. “Ah.”
“Are we in space?”
“Y—yes. The space in the center of all the multiverse.” The fact he didn’t know or remember even that startled him. He mentally braced himself, in lieu of actually being able to press any closer to the power thrumming through the structure. He focused on that crater in the grid. It was a weak point. Anything could slip in, burrow through, intrude and destroy. It had to be sewn shut like a tear in fabric.
A row of blocks clicked in movement, then another, across. Covering. The hum turned into a buzz. Bend , he thought. To his command to seal the place off as it had to be. The time room’s entrances were meant to be all accounted for and within view, for ease of security.
When all was sealed and airtight, the room was just a few shades darker.
“You look pale,” Prismo commented.
“I feel fine,” he croaked. He was shaking. He missed his cane. But he was supposed to be fine, in fully fit condition. Even if manipulating the space was something far outside of the realm of his previous body, he’d been strained worse.
Prismo walked back to him and bumped his shoulder against him. “You should rest.”
He eyed Prismo and took a step away. Prismo only followed. Very well. “Wishmasters do not sleep.”
“I didn’t say sleep, necessarily,” he murmured. Scarab could see the weariness settling. “Maybe, um, find a place to sit down. Can you drink water? Milk?”
“I prefer tea.” He forced his tone to level, but it came out forceful. He sighed. “Come now. I think you need to go back to sleep.”
“I’d like that.” He already sounded half-asleep on his feet.
Scarab led the way. He walked slowly, so Prismo could keep up. He walked even slower than he had before, which made him dread the journey back.
At the first turn they took, the hall ended abruptly, and before them was Prismo’s room.
“Oh, come on,” Scarab breathed in sharply. Behind him, Prismo giggled. “Alright.”
“...I am too old to sleep on the floor—”
“I am not going to make you sleep on the floor,” he sighed. Now, how did Prismo do it? He squinted at the walls. They were significantly less charred than before, the same almost purple light gray as usual. The pile of gore and rubble was still there, and the bed was still in shambles, though. “Hm.”
The broken frame was useless. Static seemed to gather at its edges, flickering between sharp-edged colors to a nauseating degree. The body needed sleep, so maybe he could just… fix it.
The flashing, glitching air clouded the area until he heard it buzz. He focused as hard as he could on the end goal, a Glob-damned bed for the old man to pass out in—
The colors flickered out like dying stars. And there was. Just a bed.
“Oh! That’s very cool. Thank y—you’re paler, now.”
“I feel as if I am about to find out if wishmasters can truly sleep,” he muttered. If he was going to pass out, he was at least going to stave it off for a few more minutes. He tried to take a step out of the wall, lurched, painstakingly confined to the second dimension. “I will survive.”
Prismo smiled, showing a sliver of teeth. The crows feet at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “You need some rest,” he said. “And tell Prismo that I, Prismo, said hi, please.”
If he had any energy left he would’ve at least tried to laugh. “You have my word.”
He watched him slump into bed, under the blanket provided (he was grateful that came with the package because he did not think he had the mental stamina to do anything like that again soon), and laid back. He smiled at Scarab one last time.
“Sleep well.”
And then he was out. Frankly Scarab thought that’d take a little while longer, but no, the next moment every muscle in that body relaxed, his eyes shut, and his breathing went slow and even.
Scarab stared at his sleeping body for an abnormal length of time.
Flickers of color curled into existence on the wall behind the sleeping man. Then, snapping into life once more, was Prismo the wishmaster. He breathed in sharply, blinked, focused on Scarab, and spread his arms out.
“What the hell happened?! Glob, am I alive again? Hello?”
“Hello, Prismo,” he said softly. The weariness was kicking in again. Slowly, he sat down. Just for a little while.
“Scrabby?? Hi, man, you seem different, maybe it’s the lighting.” Then his attention snapped down to his body. “I woke up.”
“Yes. Prismo said hi. Your body, I mean.”
Prismo stared at the sleeping figure. “Hi, me.” He rubbed at the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eye shut. “Ugh. What happened, seriously? A second I was there, and then I wasn't, and now I’m here.”
Scarab didn’t get to respond before Prismo slid along the wall to join him across the room. However, the sight of the mess of drying hemolymph and rocks stopped him. His eye went wide. “Uh.”
“I can explain that.”
“Uh.”
“And I will repair it.” He rubbed at his face. Sighed.
"I don't think you gotta fix that yourself." Prismo settled beside him. “Hey man, I… Okay, looks like a lot happened, and you look like a ghost—”
“I am f—” He stopped himself. He looked away.
“So maybe take five? Breathe?”
“...yes. I—” …would like that. But instead, he just nodded. Prismo seemed happy with that. He closed his eyes.
He did not sleep. But he did rest.