Chaos incarnate

Yun Jin’s head snapped left.

A tall figure in a wide, distinctive hat was already closing the distance along the wet sand, moving with unhurried certainty. Instinct overrode hesitation. She lunged and drove the end of her water weapon straight through the center of the approaching shape before Cloud Retainer’s warning could even form.

The figure burst apart into loose, harmless mist and drifting cloud.

It had never been real.

In the same instant a fine, cold spray kissed the upper curve of Yun Jin’s chest from a completely different angle — close, precise, and already finished. She felt the sudden tickling wetness run down between her breasts before the meaning registered. The water-sensitive paper darkened in a clean, irreversible bloom.

Eliminated.

“So you finally show yourself, Alice.”

Cloud Retainer’s voice carried flat across the wet sand. Speaking the name was deliberate. The safest way to fix the witch’s true position had always been to make her answer.

Alice stepped out from the broken coastal line as if she had been waiting for the cue, hands clasped behind her back, expression bright with pure, uncomplicated delight. She was the only one on the entire stretch of battlefield who looked like she was having fun.

“This is a wonderful game,”
she said, laughing openly.
“Really, the best idea anyone’s had all week.”

Xilonen decided the conversation needed more voices. She pushed off hard on her skates, aiming for the two adepti in a clean, direct line across what still looked like firm, shallow-water sand. The surface held for the first three strides.

On the fourth her blades simply stopped.

Something unseen and viscous locked both feet in place mid-glide. Momentum did the rest. Xilonen went face-first into water that should not have been deep enough to swallow her like that, skates still trapped, seal already soaked before she could even push herself up.

Alice’s laugh floated over the splash, light and genuinely amused.

“You really should watch where you’re going.”

Xilonen lifted her head, water streaming from her face, and stared at the stretch of sand she had just tried to cross. She had checked it. It had been solid. She was certain she had not yet reached the actual waterline when the skates locked.

Something was wrong with the ground itself.

Citlali staggered a half-step and pressed the heel of her hand hard against one eye.

She had reached for the future the moment Alice fully revealed herself, expecting at least a workable outline — angles of attack, probable responses, the usual branching paths. What answered was pure, unstructured noise. Possibilities bloomed and collapsed without pattern: the witch might rewrite the local gravity, might turn the sand into glass, might simply decide the match was over and leave, might do all three in the same breath for no reason beyond momentary amusement. Chaos incarnate. No reliable sequence, no stable cause and effect. The volume of contradictory outcomes hit like a physical blow and left the Predicted Slut temporarily blind and useless, future sight locked in a screaming loop of “anything can happen.”

Cloud Retainer and Zibai kept the conversation moving without her.

Zibai’s red-tinged gaze stayed fixed on the cheerfully smiling woman.

“I thought you intended to hold back.”

Alice made a small, apologetic gesture with both hands, still looking delighted.

“I am holding back. Really. Just a bit of illusion so far. Nothing intrusive.”

The words were still hanging in the air when the world quietly rearranged itself.

There was no flash, no sound, no sense of motion. One moment the group stood in the shallows with the open sea at their backs. The next they were standing on dry, packed sand while the entire stretch of water now lay where the land had been — a perfect, silent mirror of their previous positions. Waves that should have been behind them now rolled gently to the side as if the coastline itself had been folded and flipped.

Alice rocked on her heels, hands still clasped behind her back, and beamed at the two adepti and the temporarily disabled shaman as if she had simply adjusted a stage prop.

“See? Barely anything.”

The two adepti discarded their eyes the moment the coastline flipped.

Vision had become a liability. Both closed them without needing to discuss it, turning instead to the mental map each had built in the seconds before Alice fully revealed herself — the true positions of water, sand, rocks, and the residual floodwater from the earlier tsunami. Everything they did from this point would run off that internal model rather than the false landscape currently being offered.

Zibai moved first.

She launched forward in a straight, killing line aimed at the last known true location of the witch rather than the smiling mirror image still standing in plain sight. Her body passed through the illusion without resistance; the false Alice dissolved into the same harmless mist as the earlier hat-wearing decoy. Empty air. Zibai landed in a low crouch on what her memory insisted was still shallow water and immediately adjusted for the next pass.

Cloud Retainer rose a short distance into the air, legs folding into a stable meditative seat. Air began to compress and spiral around her in tightening layers, forming a dense, rotating shield that thickened with every breath. The construct was pure function — a mobile barrier of crushing pressure that would answer anything physical or near-physical the witch decided to throw next.

Alice’s voice drifted across the distorted beach from no single clear direction, carrying the exaggerated pout of a child whose game had been spoiled.

“Aww. You closed your eyes. That’s no fun at all.”

The sound skipped and overlapped, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, never settling long enough to give a reliable bearing. The false coastline remained perfectly still around them, waiting to see whether the two adepti would trust their memories longer than the witch could keep rewriting the stage.

With her hightened hearing and fokus on everything but vision she hears another hidden figure rusteling not far from the main action, a distinctive sound of something opening, wooden maybe?

no matter! the witch is more important right now.

Zibai trusted the next impulse and struck again.

Her body cut through another empty stretch of the false landscape. A soft, almost maternal
“Ah-ah”
floated from nowhere in particular, the exact tone used for a child reaching toward something fragile.

She aborted mid-motion, planted a foot, and launched backward to reset.

The world around that foot changed.

Sudden, total immersion — the unmistakable pressure and cold of a vertical column of water closing over her from every direction at once. No time to analyze. Zibai kicked sideways on pure reflex, breaking free of the sensation and landing in a low crouch several meters away. One hand was already at her chest, fingers finding the seal. It felt wet. The paper had the soft, saturated give of a disqualification.

She exhaled once, acceptance already settling in—

A light, delighted chuckle brushed her ear.

A tiny, almost toy-like water pistol delivered a single, precise spray straight across the seal she had just checked. The cold tickle of real water ran down her skin. Zibai’s eyes opened.

Alice stood well within arm’s reach, smiling with pure, childish satisfaction, the miniature soaker still raised.

(https://im.ge/i/QMnnvyY)
(artist: klyvenar)

“That first wet feeling was fake, I’m afraid. Illusions can lie to more than just the eyes, y’know.”

She gave the little pistol a cheerful shake, the real spray still glistening on Zibai’s now properly darkened seal, and looked entirely too pleased with the distinction.