It had been five days since I arrived in the capital city. There were no signs of the missing people, and things were looking grim. We confirmed that I could leave the invisible 'bubble' around the city, and that time seemed to be moving at the same pace inside and outside the 'bubble.' We tried to measure the exact dimensions of the bubble by tying a domesticated monster to a length of rope and throwing them far away before trying to pull them back, but that revealed an even more horrifying dimension to this situation.
The monster did not disappear at first. While the guard had held onto the other side of the rope, the monster had appeared unfazed, no matter how far we threw it away. Even when it had crossed the places where the disappeared people had last been seen, the monster had continued to mull about and graze. I used magic to push it further and further away, and yet all that seemed to accomplish was to spook the monster and make it cry out a little. But still, it did not disappear, so we reeled it back in.
I decided to be careful and told the demons not to touch the monster. I stared at it resolutely, just in case it would disappear when I blinked, but nothing happened.
I turned for a moment towards Kol and asked her something. The eyes of all the people around us moved from the beast to the people talking for only a moment. Kol began replying but was cut off by a scream.
The monster had disappeared. The guard who had been holding the rope reeled in terror, letting go of the rope. My eyes focused on the empty ground where the monster had been, and I caught in the corner of my vision, the length of rope that had been attached to the monster. My eyes trailed unconsciously towards the rope, a faint sense that something was wrong tingling the tip of my tongue. And then the tingle became a giant blaring proverbial sign, as I noticed the other end of the rope had disappeared and there was only a tiny fragment of rope left, the fragment that had been caught in the corner of my eye.
I panned to the guard but he was gone.
---
A small army of bureaucrats stretched out scrolls across the floor in a wide empty room. The scrolls ran over each other, trying to display more information, but as the bureaucrats scrambled their scrolls unrolled onto somebody else' roll and got tangled up into a confusing hard to follow mess like a sentence that was getting too long and self-referential in a mimetic way.
In another corner were a more orderly group of scribes who I'd tasked to record everything that we had experienced as well as the various experiments that might need to be done. I wanted to do as many of them myself, since I seemed to be immune from whatever made other people disappear, but it was impossible to truly understand the nature of this 'bubble' without risking a few more lives. Although, I was hoping to come up with a way that would avoid having to take that risk.
From the first experiment, we could conclude that any living being that crossed the invisible wall in this bubble would disappear as soon as it was no longer being observed by people who had not crossed over the line. And I was fairly certain the reason the unfortunate guard had disappeared right under our noses, had been because he had been connected to the monster by the rope, and so must have counted as having tried to cross the line. I didn't think just touching something that was about to disappear would make you disappear, but that was one of the things that we had to test next.
The bureaucrats who were pouring over the scrolls were searching for any hints from their history, myths, or even religious texts that could explain what was going on. Any similarities to things mentioned in stories might help me at least figure out which immortal was involved, which might help us figure out what they wanted.
I just hoped this wasn't a slow, cruel punishment, since that would mean there was no hope for the demons of the capital. I also wasn't sure why I was being spared, since there was no way I could directly oppose an immortal. The only thing I could think of was the support I had received from the Immortal of Desire, but I hadn't met the thirty birds since I had been thrown into the future.
Another team of scholars was going around the city, collecting scrolls full of stories and myths from the general population, as well as bringing people who knew oral stories to the scribes in the palace, so they could transcribe the things that were not in the royal records. I just hoped we would find something.
---
My importance in the city had grown greatly, and the experiment that I was going to do right now would only make it grow higher. Since I was clearly immune from the most dangerous effects of this bubble, I had to redo the monster and rope experiment from before. This time, only a handful of guards accompanied me, and I made sure to tell Kol to stay far away.
I threw the monster far away in front of me, pushing it with magic hands until it was well beyond where the human delegation had been when they had disappeared. I reeled the monster back in, let go of the rope, and made everyone turn away. When we turned back, the monster and rope were gone.
I decided to repeat the process with just a length of rope, balling one end up into a knot before chucking it away. But after reeling it in, turning around, and turning back, we found that the rope had not disappeared. Of course, I made sure to repeat this experiment a few times with different inanimate objects, which revealed that the only time inanimate objects would disappear is if they were connected to the living beings that were going to disappear.
I repeated the experiment with a living monster again, although this time, I made sure to tie the other end of the rope to another monster after I had reeled the first monster in. We turned around, then turned back, and as we had thought, both monsters had disappeared.
But now it was time for the most important experiment. I told the guards to face away, and to only turn around when I told them to. Then, I took a few steps until I was well clear of whatever boundary existed for this strange and dangerous phenomenon, grabbed some grass from beyond the boundary, and returned. I fed the grass to another monster and waited. Once the monster was done eating the grass, I joined the guards in turning away and waited.
After a moment, we turned around. I let out a relieved sigh. The guards smiled too, and we discussed our next steps for the day. There were a few more tests to conduct, but these monsters would have been too precious to the city if this experiment had not gone the way it had. Now, we knew that I could bring food and other items from outside the city to the demons of the capital. I walked up to the domesticated monster that was chewing on a new mouthful of grass and pet it on its head.
---
I left to tell the leaders of the various main cities to arrange supplies of food and other essential goods to be sent to the capital. These goods had to be sent to the cities or villages closest to the capital, from where I would collect them and bring them into the capital directly. I also revealed that all travel to the capital was banned, with the punishment being execution, although I left out the part about who exactly would be doing the executing.
Kol decided not to tell the various local rulers and deputies too much about what was happening to the capital, just in case they tried to take advantage of it. As long as we kept it vague, people's minds would stray to things like special events, eccentric royal whims, or the spread of a contagious disease, rather than an inexplicable bubble that interfered with cognition and made people disappear.
"You want us to send all of our scrolls as well?" asked Bain Rusta.
"You can send copies if you have them, but one scroll of every story, myth, folktale, even children's lullabies, if you have them. It would help if you could gather and transcribe some oral histories as well. The queen looks forward to having a complete collection of every bit of culture and history in the kingdom," I said.
We were sitting in Bain Rusta's office in Tephon. A couple of his advisers were sitting around us, taking notes and running in and out with things that I had been asking for. I remembered what Kol had said about the Rustas being close to the exiled prince, and had been asking specifically for information from the Lux Republic. He had pretended like he didn't have anything substantial, but when I told him I would search every inch of the place with magic, he'd relented and his people had started bringing in everything so that I could give it a quick look.
"Great elf," said Bain Rusta, sending a signal to his advisers. His advisers exchanged a quick glance, before packing everything up and shuffling out of the room. They closed the wooden doors, and I could hear their feet rushing down the stairs. The main doors to the building had been closed. I could imagine there was nobody within earshot anymore, with guards on the doors.
"What is it?" I asked, narrowing my eyes.
Bain Rusta leaned forward. "Something terrible has happened in the Lux Republic."