Saying goodbye to Seulgi was one of the most difficult trials that Joohyun was forced to endure. The stinging wake of their stinging, abbreviated farewell was both extremely unpleasant and curious. As it was, her life was filled with many bleak, horrible happenings and events. Her marriage and subsequent consummation with Geulim Ja. Her inability to care for, even see, her own daughters. Her tattered, torn soul, abused from countless years spent bearing the burden of trillions of deaths upon her shoulders. Why should parting with a young, seemingly insignificant mortal matter so much to her?

    Because Seulgi was the Chosen One, of course. Joohyun was attracted to Seulgi because she represented salvation, a release from the bonds of Geulim Ja. From the moment they’d met, Joohyun had seen Stardust in Seulgi’s eyes, had felt the significance that the mortal woman would eventually carry in her wake. Their days together were short, yes, but Seulgi’s personality - anxious yet thoughtful, alluring yet chaste - endeared Joohyun to her with haste. Contrary to what others believed, Seulgi was the first, and only, individual whom Joohyun had betrayed Geulim Ja for. Even without considering the great things Seulgi was destined to do, Joohyun likely would have been smitten with the mortal regardless. 

    Why, then, did Joohyun feel such a sense of apprehension as she grew farther away from the Earth? It surely had to do with her growing distaste for Seulgi’s Representation. Stardust’s personality was the direct antithesis of what Joohyun had expected. When mortals created their own Representations by shaping Vis, they were supposed to sculpt the image of an idealized version of themselves. Why would her wholesome, shy Seulgi want to become self-absorbed, overconfident, and vengeful?

    Joohyun glanced over at the insufferable girl who accompanied her on this mad quest. Despite Joohyun’s distaste for Stardust, she would have much preferred having the Representation with her instead. Stardust’s personality was a problem, but she’d never punched Joohyun.

Sooyoung wielded Yerim’s aura, tapping into her Vis despite the shield of Geulim Ja’s influence that engulfed Blackstar. The Charm - a garish, dangling earring - gave off a strong vibrance, indicating that it was being fed from somewhere. Yerim wasn’t skilled enough to work out a method of bypassing Geulim Ja’s complex charms. The source of Sooyoung’s power could have come from a Representation, had the girl created one. But she hadn’t formed a Representation yet; for mortals, the act of sculpting Vis took decades of training. Most didn’t live through it. Not for its harshness - it was a natural, painless process - but for the inexorable hand of Sire Time, sweeping them from the surface of their universe like loose flecks of stardust. It made perfect sense that the Chosen One could do it and that Sooyoung couldn’t. And yet, how did that explain her ability to continue drawing from Yerim’s Vis? Or her startling skill and proficiency when it came to manipulating the Astral energy?

Masking the motion by pushing a lock of hair aside, Joohyun rubbed the spot on her jaw where Sooyoung had struck her. There was no bruise; Representations didn’t have blood to pool beneath beneath their skin, but a dull ache throbbed across the bone. The ghost of Sooyoung’s knuckles against her cheek continued to haunt Joohyun. The pain was minor, but it should certainly not have lasted this long. Not even Geulim Ja’s infrequent - yet brutal - beatings had left any kind of persisting damage. How had Sooyoung managed to do what the most powerful, deadliest of all Representations failed to? And what was that odd afterimage Sooyoung left behind when she moved, a phenomenon barely visible even to Joohyun’s advanced perceptive ability, like a subtle reflection of Sooyoung made of Vis? Could that be her Representation?

Joohyun shook herself slightly. Sooyoung should not be her primary concern right now. In fact, in the coming days, the mysteriously potent girl would be an invaluable asset. Not only to Joohyun but to Stardust, who was prophesied to undertake the task of personally opposing Geulim Ja.

The topic of her husband’s downfall was a tender one for Joohyun. Not because she had any feelings for the deity; she wished him dead as surely as she wished for Yerim’s freedom from his prison. However, the implications of toppling such a universal powerhouse as he, the ripples of destruction that could potentially come from his fall, troubled her. Geulim Ja held half of the universe in his grasp. The eternal night manifested itself on those planets in many different ways. Not all of his conquered worlds were desolate wastelands. Just the ones that angered him the most, or posed the greatest threat to his reign.

And just how would they end him? Joohyun’s plan was to trap him within a Charm, specifically the ring she’d given to Seulgi. It was a practice Joohyun had clandestinely attempted through testing on his Sirdar, minions from other planets, and specific volunteer Representations who supported her cause. This was, of course, assuming that such a thing could be done to a being of his vastness. In reality, her best hope was to capture as much of his Vis as she could, weakening enough for her to confine him to Blackstar. Even if she, Stardust, and her sisters managed that, there was still a barrier to being free of Geulim Ja’s all-encompassing shadow.

    Her daughters. This was a problem that she refused to ruminate on for too long. Not this early in the journey. To do so would only confound her, cloud her thoughts and impair her awareness. She made a hollow promise to herself that before they arrived on Blackstar, she would work out a way to avoid “confronting” them. If there even was such a way.

    Stars, Joohyun thought to herself, shaking her head, So many questions, so many uncertainties!

    The daunting vastness of the unknown brought doubt to Joohyun. She’d thought that she had some semblance of a plan for bringing her husband down. Viewing the situation from an objective standpoint, however, made it clear that she was woefully underprepared.

    “When’s the first stop again?” Sooyoung asked suddenly, causing Joohyun to turn to her.

Joohyun had to hold back a smile; the eager girl had been adamant about taking as little rest as possible. She had no familiarity with the spiritual drain that came with prolonged exposure to the Astral Plane. Sooyoung was performing better than Joohyun had expected. They had been traveling for several hours now, and they had already covered the distance that Joohyun had allotted for a full day.

    “In the next thirty minutes or so,” Joohyun said, returning her attention to the waves and fields they were riding on. “Do you think you can last that long?”

    “I’ll be fine,” Sooyoung said stubbornly. The vibrance of her Vis intensified visibly as she pushed herself. Her movements through the fluctuating gravity of the Astral Plane were awkward, strained. Each time she fell into a rhythm of movement, the Interconnecting Breath of the Plane shifted directions, throwing her off course, forcing her to readjust. She was improving at a rapid rate for a mortal, however, and Joohyun wouldn’t be surprised if Sooyoung became adept at traversing the wind-like Interconnections that blew across the Plane.

    “Do not be so stiff,” Joohyun remarked, eyeing Sooyoung. “The more you resist, the more effort it takes.”

    Sooyoung nodded, throat working as she tried to take Joohyun’s advice. She didn’t fully succeed at relaxing her body, but she certainly did seem less tense, and her movements gained a silver of grace as she allowed the Breath of the Plane to flow through her. It was difficult to articulate just how one rode the exhales and inhales of the dimension; for Representations, it was a technique that came naturally, analogous to the flexing of a muscle or the twitching of a finger. Some were better at it than others, but all knew of its mechanics and could manage it with a degree of ease. For mortals, apparently, that didn’t seem to be the case.

    Joohyun dipped eastward, convex sheet of stars bending around her as she redirected herself. Their first rest stop was approaching, a planet about a quarter the size of Earth, with a luminescent, azure atmosphere. She glanced back to ensure that Sooyoung was following, then began to search for a Touchpoint, preparing to unweave the tightly knit fabric of the Astral Plane, allowing them to travel into the Mortal Plane.

    “This planet doesn’t look solid,” Sooyoung said as she reached the space where Joohyun levitated, scanning the swirling surface below, “How are we supposed to rest here?”

    “You will see,” Joohyun said, waving Sooyoung off, trying to concentrate. The mortal girl scowled.

    “Being all vague may work with Seul, but it won’t work with me,” Sooyoung said stubbornly, breaking Joohyun’s focus yet again. “You know I’m a human, right? I can’t just exist wherever I want.”

    Joohyun pinched the bridge of her nose and released a heavy sigh. “If that were true, you would have died the moment I brought you into the Astral Plane.”

    Sooyoung paused, then crossed her arms over her chest. “Alright, but-”

    “Please, just give me a moment,” Joohyun said, giving Sooyoung an intense glare, hoping that would be enough to pacify her, as it did when Seungwan and Yerim were being particularly difficult.

    It did not. Sooyoung sneered, defiance apparent in both her posture and her hardened eyes.

    “Sure. But if I get into a storm and ripped apart, I’m taking you with me.”

    Joohyun sighed, resisted the urge to tear handfuls of her hair from her scalp, then continued searching for Touchpoints.

It was going to be a very long month.

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I've been off of work for a bit, so I've gotten the chance to write a lot! Although this is just a short interlude, I've already started Ch. 18 (:

I wasn't planning to have an interlude with Joohyun as the POV yet, but I figured now would be a good time to get into her head. 

In case you don't follow me on Twitter, I think I'll (hopefully) be finishing up the story in the first week of June. But that's a rough estimate; I originally planned for this to be around 80-100k words, but I'll probably be going over that word count. So we'll see! Regardless, the story will be done by the end of June for certain.

Thanks for reading! Remember to upvote and comment if you enjoyed the story!