On the other side of the mountains, wide and almost treeless plains greeted them. Theora stopped, looking back at the cliff.

“Still angry at me for splitting that open?” Dema wondered. “You could’a used [Obliterate] to get us through that, right?”

“I could have,” Theora said, “But as I said, I don’t want to inflict lasting damage on the world.”

“Huh? Like, if you’d used that Skill to dig, it’d have done much less damage than me. Less of a change, I guess. Could have just remade the tunnel that already used to be there.”

“[Obliterate] is a Skill merely meant to destroy. It often delivers damage directly to the fabric of reality. I don’t want to use it if I can help it.”

Dema hummed. “But you did use it to get us out of the cage.”

Theora nodded. “I took a long time to analyse the Skill that trapped us, while we were inside. It was an energy cage enclosed in an illusion spell. Incredibly strong. For one, I’m not even sure if we were close to waiting it out. Could have taken hundreds of years. I have a duty to complete the side quest within the given time. Also, I am rather sure that due to the nature of the spell, the damage of [Obliterate] was self-contained within the prison and vanished with it.”

“Huh… So every time you use [Obliterate] it messes with reality?”

“It… depends on the target. A death is lasting damage, so if I use the Skill to kill something, there won’t be additional issues, most of the time. Not that that makes it any better. In general, the target is irreversibly broken, but in some cases the target can only be broken by damaging reality itself. Damage done by [Obliterate] cannot heal, and since I have been living for a long time and dreadfully might continue to do so, I don’t want to severely poison the world during my stay by leaving irreversible wounds all over it.”

As she was explaining that, a pang of guilt spread through her chest. She’d used [Obliterate] on the System twice, and even though each time the System had rebooted after a while, she was fairly certain that she’d permanently destroyed a part of it. Plus, usually, [Obliterate] couldn’t even be used on the same target twice. Not like there would ever be any need for that. In other words, the times she had lashed out against the System, she’d likely destroyed different aspects of it.

“I see… makes sense,” Dema nodded, sounding a little more serious. “So, uh… Want me to close that thing back up?” She gestured to the chasm.

Theora shrugged. “It’s been that way for half a century now. People and animals have likely already been using it. We triggered the illusion, so they couldn’t find the cage and just walked by. After all, it would be bad if the target of the assassination could have received help from outside.”

“I wonder who did that. Must have been strong.”

“Probably already dead,” Theora mused, though she was merely guessing. “This all likely transpired ages back.”

“Right. You said you’ve been here before, prior to the trap being set. When was that?”

Theora fell into silence for a while, stroking her chin in thought. What was the quest she’d been on back then? She started scrolling through her notification history, scrolled and scrolled, and finally found one that sounded about right. “Hm. Around seven hundred years ago.”

“Damn,” Dema puffed. “You really are an old one.”

Theora looked down to the lush plains to the right of the outgoing path. Last time, they had still been ocean.

“Yeah,” she said, eyes heavy and tired. “I really am.”

Dema smiled, and it didn’t take long for it to turn mischievous. “I’m glad we’re out!”

“Oh? Are you? Why?”

Raising her eyebrows knowingly, she increased her pace. “Why, because you couldn’t dote on me in there! Not the right place! I’m looking forward to you starting it up again. And it happens to be spring!”

Theora shook her head. What in the world was she talking about?

That said, she did feel bad. Yes, using [Obliterate] to break them out was never going to be her first option; ideally, the cage would have given way soon after entering. But instead, she’d made Dema spend several more decades in confinement. Awful. The least she could do was offer the slightest hint of an apology, so she kept her eyes open in hopes of finding a way. And soon, she found it.

 

In the months after their involuntary shared solitude, Dema’s behaviour towards Theora changed. She no longer kept trying to wake her up to rush her along. Instead, Dema simply relished the time in any way possible; mostly by scheming and taking in their surroundings.

It seemed like the one thing Dema had predominantly been occupied with before their entrapment was her fear of having Theora age and waste away completely asleep. Now that this was no longer a concern, she happily gave the heroine all the sleepy time she could ever ask for.

That said, Dema still woke her up whenever she found a pretty rock to show off, or a particularly cool or large insect. 

Conversely, Theora also spent less time asleep now. Not a lot less time; being awake still felt awful, but she had found a little habit to follow every day. Something that was both cynical and the most sincere thing she could come up with at the same time; which, to be fair, wasn’t necessarily the most unexpected combination when travelling with one’s future murder victim.

It took a while for her to actually notice what she was doing, though. She hadn’t thought too much of it when she’d started, the first time they had passed by a lush and verdant meadow. Just a small little way to apologise. And Dema had done her absolute very best not to throw Theora off and give the game away — a feat that, in hindsight, considering how much Dema liked to tease people and especially Theora, must have taken quite an amount of willpower and self-restraint. 

Right now, again, they were standing in a valley within a vast hillside meadow, and Theora had just a moment ago done what she’d always done lately when the opportunity presented itself. She had done what she’d simply rationalised as an ‘apology’. Without second thoughts, without thinking deeply. And Dema stood in front of her, grinning.

System notifications could be muted. That was something Theora always did, because these notifications meant nothing to her. However, the System wasn’t necessarily made for immortals, so it was only possible to mute the notifications for an hour, a day, a few days, up to a year maximum.

And right that morning, that year had apparently timed out without Theora realising, and now, she was presented with a System message that made her blush ever so faintly.

 

[Flower Language] advanced to Level 53!

 

Oh no.

Theora stared at Dema, who was holding a freshly picked bouquet of pansies in front of her chest, starting to grin as she realised things had finally dawned on Theora.

“I’ve been giving you flowers non-stop,” she mumbled with the blankest expression. “Oh my god.”

“Yep! Sure have!” Dema was now beaming ear-to-ear, but not without a decent hint of smugness mixed into her expression. “You finally noticed! And after saying you’d never do it again, too!”

“I was sleepwalking,” Theora lied.

“Pretty sure you weren’t!”

“No, I definitely was!” Theora turned away, burying her face in her hands. Really, really, this was not the time to blush. No, instead, this was the time to realise she’d messed up even more than she initially thought. The Skill was called ‘Flower Language’.

“Wait,” Theora said as she noticed the bigger problem. “Wait, what have I been saying?”

Had she really been communicating her subconscious feelings all this time? Judging from the reaction, she definitely might have. Dema raised her head with a swing, making her horn twirl in the air. Her eyebrows perked up. “Why, some of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard, that’s what!”

“What did the flowers say?”

“Oh, no, no! Those messages were for my eyes only! Not gonna tell you!”

“No, please tell me. I was the one who sent them, I should be allowed to know what they said,” Theora pleaded, but Dema just kept teasing her.

 

It took a while for them to calm down and find their way back to the path towards the location of the side quest. It was right about then that Theora felt the lump in her chest that Dema had done quite a good job of distracting her from.

Over fifty levels. She’d collected and given Dema enough flowers to level up a Skill over fifty times. Given those flowers to Dema, of all people. Not that Theora had a right to give anyone flowers with how much of a wretched monster she was, but Dema?

Was she trying to apologise for being about to kill her? Or gain her good favour in some way? If anything, Dema should be throwing those flowers on the ground, trampling on them.

Well, not really. Flowers were precious and didn’t deserve to be trampled on. But the point was, Dema should be angry, or annoyed, or something, anything like that.

And she probably was. Dema just played along. This was all a scheme, after all, a scheme Theora nothing but deserved. Dema must have noticed a long time ago, and had kept this little farce going. The two of them were just acting as if they could have a cordial relationship, when it was always clear that they couldn’t.

And yet, these thoughts were still immensely unfair. Theora was imagining malice in Dema’s actions when there was no proof other than the fact that her actually being genuinely happy at receiving flowers like this was pretty much impossible to comprehend.

“Brooding again?” Dema asked, giving a sidelong smirk. It knocked Theora right out of her downward spiral of destructive thoughts.

“I—,” she started, but stopped herself. “… I suppose.”

“I’m showing you rocks, you’re showing me flowers.” Dema shrugged with an innocent look on her face. “Ain’t gonna call it anything but a fair trade.”

Theora swallowed. Then, nodded.

“Can’t have you steal my thing, after all!”

“Your thing?” Theora asked with a slight squint.

“Yeah! I’m the one who’s supposed to be thinking and scheming and brooding! Not you! Can’t have that. Nu-uh.” She waved her pointed index finger in a motion of denial. “No more thinking for Theora.”

“What?” She boggled.

“Yep! If something comes up that needs thinking about, let me handle it. No more thinking for Theora!”

No more thinking for Theora. She tried not to think about that rule too hard.

To distract herself, Theora brought up the quest log.

 

Time remaining: 3 years.

 

These numbers were dropping in the blink of an eye, and yet not nearly fast enough. But the two of them were almost there, both in a spatial and temporal sense. And then, what would happen? Would it finally be time to end all this? Would the System leave them alone? Probably not. But even if it did, what else would Theora do with her time?

Just one more blink.