Inkborn: The Ballad of Balpie II — The X

Inkborn: The Ballad of Balpie II — The X Experiment
by Quilla Raye

The Flats were not like usual today.

The White expanse stretched endlessly as it always had, but something within it trembled with change. The surface—once silent and still like untouched paper—seemed alive with restless energy. The great X, the crossing of ancient strokes that had long been the only gateway for color and brightness, pulsed with a rhythm no Penman had ever witnessed before.

Balpie stood near its center.

He had begun calling himself Balpie Penman now, and the name filled him with a quiet pride. It connected him to his tribe, to the long lineage of ink-born beings who had walked the Flats before him. Yet today he felt less like one of them and more like the beginning of something new.

The experiments were affecting the Flats.

At first, the changes had been subtle—small flickers of color bleeding into the white space. But now the very form of things was shifting.

Balpie looked down at himself.

He was not shaped like the others anymore.

His body had once been simple—ink, line, movement across the white surface. But now something else had emerged. He was becoming a shape that no ancient diagram described. His head was a rounded orb of dark ink, smooth and deep as the night between stars. His arms stretched outward as living lines, straight and deliberate, like the sacred strokes the elders simply called The Line.

He looked less like a mark on paper and more like a drawing that had come alive.

Blots of color flickered across his form.

Not random blots either. These felt intentional, like fragments of thought becoming visible.

Around him, the air shimmered.

Lights flashed from the X in unpredictable bursts. The rays from the Other Universe poured down in streaks of gold, violet, and electric blue. They bent around Balpie as if he were the center of their motion.

For a moment he felt surrounded by something vast—an aura that curved around him like the symbol of infinity itself.

The X flared.

Then dimmed.

Then flared again.

Each pulse sent ripples across the White expanse, as if the Flats were not solid at all but a massive sheet of paper responding to unseen pressure.

Balpie stared at his glowing reflection in the surface.

“Oh my mother!”

“Oh my father!”

His thoughts rushed instantly to them.

Slud Ramlud, whose gel-ink dreams had once filled his childhood with color.

And Ramlud Rowes, the strict ballpoint whose steady strokes had taught him discipline and direction.

What would they think if they saw him now?

Before he could answer that thought—

Zap!

A burst of light exploded from the X.

Flash!

Color flooded the sky of the Flats.

Crackle!

The surface trembled as if struck by invisible thunder.

Poof!

Balpie felt something impossible happen.

His body stretched and folded into a shape no Penman had ever known.

He felt full—complete in a strange way—but also distant, as if reality itself had stepped half a pace away from him.

The Flats faded.

In their place appeared colors he had never truly seen before.

Copper.

Deep metallic copper, glowing like a warm sunset.

Black like his own ink, but richer somehow—elastic and alive.

Balpie stared around him in wonder.

“Whoa!” he exclaimed.

“Ahhh!”

“How cool!”

But his excitement froze suddenly.

He couldn’t move.

An immense force pressed down on him, like a giant magnet pulling every particle of ink in his body toward a single point.

His arms—those long lines of living ink—shuddered.

His round head felt heavy with pressure.

“This must be some kind of experiment!” Balpie shouted.

The air around him thickened with strange sensations. Invisible currents brushed past him like clouds of noble gases, drifting and swirling through his awareness.

His vision flickered.

He felt himself losing consciousness—but not in the way Penmen feared.

It wasn’t the fading of existence.

It felt more like being moved.

Like a page being turned.

“I’m not… dead…” he murmured.

Somewhere deep inside him, he sensed something watching. Not threatening. Not cruel. Just powerful.

Something that understood where he came from.

Zap!

Another flash erupted from the X.

The force pulled him inward—smaller and smaller—until he felt as if he were sliding through the eye of a needle.

A tiny opening of light.

A pinhole in the fabric of the Flats.

Then—

Silence.

Light poured around him like liquid fire.

When Balpie opened his eyes again, everything was different.

The white expanse was gone.

Instead he saw glowing grids stretching endlessly in every direction. Lines formed perfect squares, moving and shifting like a living network. Tiny sparks of color blinked on and off across the surface like stars.

He realized with amazement that he was standing on something solid—but not paper.

A surface made of light.

Balpie looked down at his body.

He was still himself.

The round ink head.

The line-like arms.

But now his form glowed faintly red and gold, as if light flowed through the ink instead of simply resting on it.

He felt… warm.

Powerful.

Alive in a completely new way.

A strange realization struck him.

He could move.

Not by dragging himself across a surface the way Penmen always had—but by thinking about movement.

He stepped forward.

The glowing grid beneath him shifted instantly.

A new world unfolded around him—endless windows of color, shapes forming and disappearing faster than any line could draw.

Balpie gasped.

“I can navigate this place…”

He reached out one long arm and touched a floating square of light.

The square expanded instantly into a vast landscape of symbols and images.

It was knowledge.

Information.

Entire oceans of thought moving through invisible currents.

Balpie laughed in amazement.

“I’m on a computer!”

He didn’t fully understand what that meant—but he could feel it.

The Flats had been paper.

This place was something far greater.

A universe made of signals, light, and endless pathways.

As he moved through it, Balpie realized something else.

He was no longer just a Penman.

He was something new.

An infrared being, glowing between worlds—half ink, half light.

Somewhere far away, the great X still pulsed on the Flats, sending energy across dimensions.

Balpie could feel it like a heartbeat connecting him to his origin.

The experiment had worked.

The forces behind the rays—the mysterious Ether, or perhaps the One Who Draws—had opened a door no Penman had ever crossed.

Balpie floated above the glowing grid, watching endless streams of information move beneath him.

He understood now.

The Flats were only the first page.

And he had just been written into the next one.

Balpie Penman smiled as new worlds of color unfolded before him.

He was no longer bound by a single surface.

He was multidimensional now.

And the story of the Inkborn had only just begun.