Chapter Text
It was well into Katerina’s spring semester in NRC when Ortho revealed to her his thoughts on her unusual predicament on being indebted to his older brother.
“You know, Idia really likes you. He’s never attempted to make a single friend the whole time he’s been here.” Ortho said to her when she was in the library, doing one of Idia’s many tasks for her.
They met in the library not long after she got spirited away there. She was desperately trying to find books that made sense, he was trying to check out books without getting caught.
At some point, she couldn’t even remember how it started, she and him got into discussions over different media from their worlds. She compared her situation to an Isekai, which is a word he recognized.
He rambled on about game consoles and titles she had never heard of, she showed him her favorite Gatcha game that had stopped working on her cell phone since she got here.
He made all these suggestions of what she should play, and she told him she had no means of getting the systems required to play them.
Next thing she knew, she was 10,000 whatever thaumarks costed in debt and had a mountain of games and manga that she wasn’t prepared to pay back in favors.
His favors were petty, attend meetings for him, talk to people for him, retrieve stuff for him. It was stupid, but every time she tried to tell him off, he’d dangle her debt above her head and promise to let it go with just one more favor, which never came.
Idia’s brother, Ortho, was the more reasonable one of the two. He wasn’t so bad to talk to, and it was cool to talk with a robot with such sentient AI that he felt like a real person. But that conversation he started felt off.
Katerina knew what real friendship looked like. Well, she had seen it on TV and in games, so she could make an accurate guess as to how it would feel to have a real friend.
To even suggest Idia was anything close to that felt like something programmed into Ortho to say.
“Yeah, well he has a funny way of showing it,” Katerina grumbled under her breath as she gazed at the local Foothill town bookstore’s manga section, looking for whatever Idia had wanted to be bought for him.
“I know it’s hard to tell, but he usually never talks to people in person unless he has to!” Ortho tried convincing her, floating at her side, “I don’t think I can express how thankful I am to you for that.”
“I didn’t do anything special.” She insists, because she didn’t.
As nice as it was to fill her thoughts of never going home with some game that she’ll never see again if she left, she knew that it came at a cost. Everything did.
“Please just consider giving him a chance. The longer you two are friends, the less he’ll feel the need to blackmail you over it.” Ortho continued to try to convince her, his blunt choice of words peeved her. It’s like everyone in this school flaunted the fact they treat each other like crap, it’s no wonder so many of them have deep-seated issues with trauma that explode into dangerous magic mental breakdowns.
“Do you hear yourself? Why should I care if he actually likes me, he’s still using me! He’s using you!” Katerina pointed out, raising her voice even in the quietness of the library, she was sure people were staring but she didn’t care.
“I don’t know what you mean.” Ortho replied, and his automated tone of voice might’ve suggested just that.
“Doesn’t it bother you that he takes you to class with him and makes you collect his school work if he doesn’t show up? He calls you his brother, but to me, it seems like he only made you just to be-“
“I’ll stop you right there.” Ortho cut her off bluntly, and at his sudden burst of anger, she was having trouble distinguishing whether Ortho was reacting out of protocol or genuine feelings of being offended.
Either way, Katerina immediately felt guilt wash over her. She messed up. She’s always messing up.
“I don’t blame you for not knowing the situation, he doesn’t talk to anyone about it.” Ortho assures her, “But…I am here as his brother, I know that much.”
Ortho left after that.
Katerina never got to speak with Ortho again until much later, when mysterious armed guards broke into her newly fixed home.
She had tried to fight back after Jamil and Vil had been rendered unconscious in the arms of those dragging them away with no explanation, Grim had already been captured, and her flimsy fencing sword had snapped in two the moment she tried to whack away the unknown guard’s weapons.
She could barely see anything through the rubble and the flailing of magic spells from the first-year students. When the dust had settled, she had been dragged along into a meeting between the vices and housewardens who were left to discuss what happened.
She, as the prefect who had been left standing once her friends dropped to the ground, had to explain what she saw and what she knew.
Obviously, she had tagged along with Epel and Rook to get everyone back.
She had no magic, but she could fight, she believed whole-heartedly that she could. It didn’t sit right with her to abandon everyone to an unknown fate. As rough around the edges they were, she saw they were in pain, and to lose them to some freak inhumane experiment was something she felt determined to prevent.
Not even her fear of heights stopped her, though she clung to Epel tightly with her eyes firmly closed as they flew on a broom together. They looked ridiculous, she was sure as she was far taller than Epel was, but it was an embarrassment she was willing to live with if it meant she could get Grim and everyone back.
They were caught, tased, and dragged to the depths like everyone else surely was, but they had finally gotten to where they needed to be.
Idia and Ortho were waiting for them there, Idia dressed in an outfit more formal than anything she’d seen him wear before.
“Kat…and you two, do you guys have a death wish or something?” Idia questioned them, pausing on her presence in particular, “You’re lucky I’m the one in charge right now, If it were anyone else, you’d be gone.”
Her mind was swimming with thoughts of some girl who resembled her and the God she served under, only coming back at reality out of an immediate desire for answers.
“Where is everyone? Are they safe?” Katerina questions him.
“Safer than you just were.” Idia retorts, “Which, speaking of, how the hell did you guys get here?”
“Simple, we followed our worried hearts! Our desire to see our friends safe brought us here to you which, might I say, you are just as Roi des Dragons described you…the Watchman of the Island of Woe, how magnifique!” Rook replied more cheerfully.
“Uh, Rook, remember we’re upset here.” Epel reminded him, but it was a helpless effort. At the news that everyone was safe, Rook returned to his usual state of appreciating everything around him.
Katerina, however, was still furious.
“Yeah, yeah, but the Charon troops trounced you guys bad back at school, why would you follow us all the way here if you knew you couldn’t beat ‘em?” Idia asked.
“Because the last time we saw our friends, they were beaten up and kidnapped with no explanation! That doesn’t exactly fill us with confidence that they’re getting treated well here. Does your scary secret organization have a communication issue going on?” Katerina questioned, wagging her finger in his face.
Idia promptly grabbed her hand and lowered it for her, his grip was surprisingly strong for someone who described himself as unathletic and feeble.
“My folks just stepped out, this place is usually a lot rougher with their collection because they’re used to dealing with active overblots. I had no say in what they did,” Idia told her “and you out of everyone shouldn’t be here. Rook, you need to get Kat and the first-year out of here.”
Kat fought her arm back and recoiled, “Don’t talk to me like I don’t know what I’m doing! I came here because I want Grim and everyone else back safe and I’m not leaving until I see them again.”
“Yeah, what she said!” Epel backed her up.
Idia looked desperately for Rook, seeking some third-year common sense, but Rook held up a bag full of cosmetics products and declared, “We’ve got an emergency at hand, Vil’s most necessary skincare products were left behind and he desperately needs to have them with him!”
“Unbelievable, none of this is worth coming all the way over here.” Idia groaned, “Okay, I’ll crack you a deal…You give me Vil’s skincare products and…Whatever cat food or brush Kat brought for Grim.”
“I want him back.” Katerina declared with her arms folded.
“Yeah, whatever,” Idia dismissed her, “I do all of that and you three can sit pretty and wait for all the testing to be done, capiche?”
Katerina looked back at Epel who shrugged and Rook who gave her a reassuring smile, “We’re not exactly in a position to say no, are we, Félin?” Rook said almost jovially, accepting the terms they had been given.
She looked again to Idia, who was crouched closer to Ortho’s height, whispering something to him. Katerina thought she caught wind of them saying something about a ‘River Lethe’ and ‘cognitive dissonance,’ but she didn’t know the significance of either of those things.
After they were done, Ortho approached them and gave them the orders to follow him, “Please give the items you want the subjects to have to Idia and he’ll fly them up. You’ll be following me.”
Rook did as he was told even as Katerina remained uneasy, but she was urged to comply for their own safety and she wasn’t going to put Epel and Rook in more danger than they already had been in.
They watched Idia fly away on a technomagic vehicle called a ‘chariot’ and the group followed Ortho deeper into the Isle of Woe.
It resembled Greece from Katerina’s world. She knew because her grandparents had immigrated to America from there, often showing her pictures of them and her mother when she was young, having picnics on Philopappos Hill.
A wave of Déjà vu hit her when her surroundings reminded her more of her dream than her own memories. That girl walking alone in a place that looked like this, flower clutched in her hand, hanging onto what little joy she had until the God of the Underworld appeared before her to shatter what little hope she had left.
Epel took her hand when he noticed her wavering and, quite literally, dragged her back to reality as they continued to walk.
“I’m real sorry about the way he talked to you, he’s just under a lot of pressure right now.” Ortho told them, “But I do think we’re justified in having the overblot victims here. It’s a rare phenomenon that not many subjects survive. By studying them, we’re learning more about overblot and how we can try to prevent it in the future, we’re ensuring they don’t relapse either.”
Katerina understood that just fine, but something else bothered her, “Right, but what about Grim…”
“He was showing signs of something being off. That much is evident by how he attacked you.” Ortho pointed out.
Katerina looked down at her scratched hand, still red and healing. She almost entirely forgot that even happened because she was so preoccupied with everything else.
“We’ll try to get to the bottom of everything. This is what we were born to do, or Idia was at least.” Ortho explains, leading them inside to the Hecate Sector.
Ortho took a glimpse at the large pillar entrance they all came through, as if pondering it.
Katerina didn’t say much else. Her and Ortho hadn’t had the opportunity to speak again after their talk in the library and Ortho didn’t seem interested in bringing it up. He was on duty, so Katerina chose to hold her tongue…
They were taken in to sign NDAs and do the whole song and dance to keep facility and its contents a secret once they leave.
Rook confessed his guilt ,and then Ortho came back again strange.
She didn’t think it was possible for a robot to look distant, as if something else was there behind his mechanical eyes. She could’ve spoke up then as well, but she didn’t…
The power shut off and suddenly their environment became hostile. It was one bout of danger after the next, the facility illuminated in the dark only by blaring red warning lights.
Rook incited Katerina and Epel both to help the STYX staff under attack, and when she needed him most, Epel shielded her from sudden death with his newly manifested signature spell. It was a sign of their friendship, his spell coming to fruition to save her, a person he had come to care about.
Katerina squeezed his hand when she emerged from his magic coffin. She owed him in more ways than one, and it was evident they were about to face a lot more danger here. They had to find the others, they had to find Grim.
It didn’t take too long to find the others, they were bickering amongst themselves as usual. It was so endearingly familiar that she hadn’t cared how inconvenient it was to her plan to get out. Rook rallied everyone into a huddle, arms around her and Vil, everyone was shoulder to shoulder.
…It reminded her of how she’d join in on group cheering with her old school’s fencing group. They fought individually, but they won as a team. That’s what they would all do as all eight of them split into teams and fought their way deeper into STYX.
They huddled together and looked to Katerina, this magicless human armed only with a stray piece of metal she found lying on the ground by Grim’s broken room, for words of encouragement.
“Félin, would you do the honors of giving us a rallying cry?” Rook asked her.
“Me?” She repeats dumbly, “Why me?”
“Better you than any of these bickering tots,” Vil said, “you have wiser words than you believe you do.”
“None of them are coming to me at the moment.” She excused herself, her mind occupied with Grim’s disappearance, Idia’s coldness, and words left unsaid between her and Ortho.
“Just come up with somethin’” Epel encouraged her, “Put some spirit into it.”
Kat thought about what she wanted to say to those girls at her old school, when they had looked at her with disdain even after she won them the fencing tournament, all because she had assumed they would consider her a friend too…
“We’re gonna make it back to school TOGETHER!” She shouted earnestly and instead of silence, she received a synchronized cheer in response.
That’s right, no one was getting left behind. Not on her watch.
They descended all the way into underworld in the literal sense.
Katerina couldn’t feel everything that Vil and the others felt, but there was so much miasma in the air that even she could almost see it.
The groans of the phantoms below them sent shivers down her spine and still, she stood resolute with nothing more than her hands and the magicians around her to rely on.
Together they fought through the puzzles Ortho set up for them, the titans that emerged from the abyss, and withstood the mighty strength of the thunder spear. Their breaks were few and far between, but they continued to prevail with the aid of their comrades and STYX staff.
They managed to get on one of the spare chariots the STYX staff provided for them and they flew above Tartarus. It took one warning call from the other teams and a body exuding blot crawling out from the underworld gate to prove to them that they were at a dead end.
“Something’s crawling out…” Rook observed.
“Is it a phantom? No, it’s-“ Vil tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
It took Katerina less than a second.
“IDIA!” She shouted, her voice echoing off the walls and reverberating off the gate.
She had seen many reduced to this before but not quite like this. Idia theatrically rose above the gate and looked up at his captive audience.
“Kat, my sweet, whaddya think?!” He asked, “This is the kinda upgrade people like you could only dream of! Joining the ranks of SSR Epic Troublemakers isn’t so bad after all!”
“You’re insane!” She still found the strength to scream back at him, she looked up at her Pomefiore posse and found they looked like they were almost struggling to breathe.
“More miasma is rising up from the gate! Goodness, it's dense-“ Rook broke into a cough.
“What did he call you-?” Epel tried to ask before he was hacking up a lung as well.
Katerina was momentarily preoccupied with worrying about them until she was pulled back into the situation by Idia screaming back up at them.
“Oh yeah, that’s probably debilitating for you guys. When you overblot, all blot-based debuffs turn into buffs, so while it’s doing a number on you, I’m gettin’ sweet attack buffs! You don’t stand a chance! RIP!” He continued to talk like Idia, but only in vernacular alone, every other word that came out of his mouth was as deluded as the other overblots.
“Now it’s time to kick things off…Game, set, match…Gate to the Underworld.” He snapped his fingers, and the gate opened on command with an even louder groan.
An even larger creature emerged from the depths, connected to Idia by a thick line of blot. In a deeply upsettingly familiar voice, the monster called out to them.
“Hey, guys! I’m back!”
“What in the blue blazes is THAT?!” Epel shouted.
“It’s Ortho!” Katerina answered him with an equally appalled shout.
“No, no way. It can’t be. It’s-“ Vil tried to fight her observation, but looking at it, he couldn’t deny what he was seeing.
“Turns out my curse is a blessing after all. With all this blot I can absorb and the help of my phantom friends, I’ve become the underworld itself,” the Ortho phantom explained, “Once we leave, this world will be remade so that phantoms will walk among humans. We won’t be trapped here any longer.”
The phantoms crawling on his shoulders moaned and expressed their desires to return to the surface, little remnants of the victims they spawned from. They were like the living dead, and Katerina felt her heart skip a beat when she saw who was among them.
“Wait, hold up... Look! On Ortho's shoulder!” Epel pointed.
Trapped amongst the blot and phantoms was Grim, scruff raised, teeth bared, and hissing as if he were one of them.
“Grim!” She gasped.
“My word. I was not expecting him to get lost in the Underworld and overtaken by Ortho!” Rook exclaimed.
“We gotta get him outta that thing... But how?!” Epel and everyone looked to the housewarden, whose gaze was still fixated on the two overblotted brothers beneath them.
“This is it, if we don’t come up with a plan now, the world will end.” Vil told them, and it didn’t exactly fill them all with much confidence, “If we take them on in groups, we’ll have enough magic conserved to finish them off.”
“There are people who need help near you, Azul and I will start the attack.” Riddle said over the transceiver, “Be sure to meet back up at sector one to finish this once and for all.”
“Leona did you hear that?” Vil asked.
“Alright…The sooner we get outta this hell, the better.” Leona agreed.
Katerina felt entirely useless watching everyone get to work. She felt her skills had helped her at least a little bit over the course of this hectic school year but now she was faced with a match she wasn’t equal to.
She couldn’t use her brains or brawn to get out of this. This was a problem only someone with magic could solve, and she had none of that.
They heard over the transceiver what had conspired, Riddle collapsing after their offensive attack, Leona and Jamil making it out by the skin of their teeth.
Katerina looked below and saw Ortho and Idia climbing the wall again, Grim still their captive prisoner.
The STYX staff gave them the half-charged thunder spear to drag onto the chariot and, to her surprise, she was not sent away with the rest of the staff by Rook.
By all means, she didn’t belong there. But they all wanted her to stay despite the danger.
Maybe it was because they all started this together, she had no magic to put into the spear but she could at least hold it.
“Alright…Let’s review our objectives here. First, we get the phantomized Ortho away from Idia and break him out of his overblot. Next, we rescue Grim. Then, we send the phantoms fused with Ortho back to the underworld. Finally, restore the Cerberus System and reseal Tartarus and the Underworld.”
“That’s a whole lotta steps.” Katerina observed, but Epel patted her back.
“We’ll be fine. We managed to get Vil back to normal after he overblotted, and we still performed at VDC.” He assured her.
Vil looked proud of his first year and couldn’t hide his adoration, “Well spoken for a spudling.”
Rook wholeheartedly agreed before turning his attention back to control, “Is there any hope of restoring Cerberus on your end?”
“We’ve been trying, but It normally uses DNA authentication from a member of the Shroud family to shut down and reboot. But a Shroud started this whole mess. We’re doing everything we can but it seems nothing can be done unless they do it.” The STYX staff member explained.
“They’ll have to clean up their own mess then…We’ll handle it.” Vil assured them.
“Hey Kat, I know this is a bad time but…You seem to know Idia pretty well despite him being a shut-in.” Epel said, “…What do you think will happen when he’s back to normal?”
“…I don’t know,” Katerina admitted, “I thought I knew him…I thought I knew both of them. If there's a prize for rotten judgment, I would’ve won it by now. I can’t believe even here I’m still playing the fool.”
“You aren’t a fool, Katerina. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now how foolish those who lose control of their senses are. You’re standing here absolute while they are trying to end the world. They’re the only fools I see here.” Vil assured her, “We’re all going to bring them to submission and make them do as we say, it’s how we Night Raven College students settle our differences. Then, I say you should have your way with them.”
“Have my way?” She repeated.
“Tell Idia you’re done doing his bidding. Yes, I’ve seen how he has you run errands for him.” Vil told her, it made her feel embarrassed that he even noticed something she had tried to keep secret, “You have more strength than you think. Take the reigns and win this battle, grant yourself your own freedom.”
“He’s right! And after this, you’ll have Grim back and we’ll all go back to school together, it’ll be like normal, only better!” Epel encouraged.
She didn’t expect to be surrounded by so much love at a moment like this. Being at the end of all things made her yearn for this new life she made for herself in Twisted Wonderland more than ever. She wanted to see Grim, Ace, and Deuce again. She even wouldn’t mind Idia giving her tasks to do while holding her debt over her head again.
The firm but comforting hands they had on her shoulder were removed and they focused on bringing their chariot above Tartarus, where Idia and Ortho still desperately climbed for their freedom.
Vil looked thoughtfully at them as Idia shouted obscenities. They knew they had to stop him here, but to crush their desires for a better life, even if it meant the end of the world, hurt.
“I always wanted to play a hero,” Vil told them, eyes still fixated on their final battle just inches away from reaching them, “but there are no heroes or villains here, just two classmates who are both fighting to have our own way. Whoever's left standing wins the right to make their dreams come true.”
He looks to Katerina and his confidants, “Let's give this everything we have. I’ll be on stage until the very end.”
At his beckoning, the magicians flung their magical offensive at the pair. Bursts of flora, fire, and water rained down on Idia and Ortho who summoned the might of hundreds of ancient phantoms on them.
Their attacks rocked the chariot that Katerina desperately clung to. The pair was already beaten down by the previous two teams and even though they were strong compared to the three mages with her, she could see that the Ortho phantom was splitting apart at the seams.
They couldn’t go on for much longer. Vil, ever astute, saw this and rallied all of them together to grab the thunder spear and charge their magic into it.
Katerina could do nothing but hold the spear’s end and lift it, helping it point directly at Ortho and Idia.
“One last shot!” Vil shouted above all the noise, his pristine vocal range making him sound clear and assured.
The thunder spear released a crack of lighting and Ortho and Idia exploded in a burst. Ortho’s body promptly fell apart, stray phantoms descending down into the depths. Katerina could see Grim just barely holding on.
“They’re falling!” Rook screamed.
“I’m gettin’ as close as I can! Kat, try to grab Grim!” Epel yelled back as he lowered the chariot closer to Tartarus.
Katerina leaned forward and tried to grab Grim’s scruff. Her fingertips just barely graced his fur before he tumbled down with Ortho, just out of her reach.
Katerina felt herself begin to tip forward and Epel dove down, grabbing her waist and pulling her back up with one arm still on the Chariot’s wheel.
“Idy…” the Ortho Phantom’s voice groaned, soft and defeated “I guess I never got to be...your hero…”
“I’m not leaving you this time, Ortho.” she hears Idia say, barely above a whisper.
She sees the resolute look in his eyes as his overblot form melts away. His shoulders slack and he allows himself to fall down into oblivion with Ortho.
They were about to die, actually die.
They were falling far away from them, to a place they couldn’t possibly reach them.
Then, something strange came over Katerina, like time stood still. She looked down at the swirling pit of despair those three were falling into…And felt compelled to jump in.
Never before had such an insatiable urge come over her. This invisible force beckoning her to the underworld was evident over her face, because she could hear the Pomefiore trio trying to speak to her, muffled like something was separating her from them with an invisible wall.
“Kat,” Epel calls out to her, voice broken.
“Katerina!” Vil says in a firm and almost angry voice, more of a warning, like he already understands what she’s thinking.
Before anyone has the chance to grab her or say anything more, she jumps.
Screams echo behind her as she sinks Into Tartarus with them. It doesn’t take her too long to promptly land on top of Idia and push both of them onto Ortho’s decaying phantom. She grabs a fist full of Ortho’s clotted blot and climbs to the shoulder where Grim is stuck, one hand around Idia’s left shoulder.
If she can keep them all together, they’ll be fine, right?!
She pins Grim to her chest as they continue to fall, the phantom corpse they were all tethered to was barely anything more than a decomposing pile of what Ortho used to be.
Nothing about this thing was recognizable, but she dug through its flesh to try to find something that looked like him.
An arm, his firey blue hair, that mask he always wore, anything.
With all of the adrenaline she felt jumping in, she didn’t realize she could barely feel her heartbeat in her chest anymore, if at all.
Her hand clasps around something that she can’t make out and she drifts away like that, descending into oblivion.
She thinks she sees a gallant hero coming to save them from above. The first thing that came to her mind was to ask the hero for help saving everyone, but no words came out, she didn’t have the strength to say anything…
The last feeling she could register before it all went dark was an odd sense of peace. She wasn’t scared, in a way, it felt like she belonged down there…
Like a sudden snap of a thin thread at the touch of a blade, she thought no more.
(Illustration by Celesomnis)