“Oh, you remember?” Bell asked nonchalantly. “A long time ago, yes. I was still fairly young.”

The outer barrier created by the Afterthought fell apart. Bell’s large and wobbly half-bubble kept protecting them, only letting through dulled screams and warbled high-frequency sounds from outside.

“How long will this last?” Theora asked.

Bell shrugged. “As long as I want.”

Theora swallowed. Wasn’t this a good moment? Maybe the best one she’d get. Theora took a deep breath.

She sat down on the cold marble floor and pulled Bell’s protective gelatinous mass up her arms like sleeves. Then, she retrieved the box of cookies from her cloak. With a click, she opened the lid and the stale and musty smell in the hall parted way for the sweet scent of caramel and nuts and — chocolate. “Would you like some?” Theora asked, placing the box down. “I baked them today with instructions from friends.”

Bell let herself fall, diving down the dome liquid and coming to a sit cross-legged. “Yes,” she said, taking one to taste. Theora was slightly happy to not be accused of trying to poison her this time. Bell chewed for a while, and then said, “It’s pretty good. Thank you.”

Small shivers made their way down Theora’s skin. So, being thanked could feel good, after all? Being praised for her baking was not so bad. She relished in the feeling for a moment, giving Bell time to finish.

And then, Theora finally managed to get out the words.

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you.”

“Sure. What’s up?”

Theora blinked. Oh, that girl wasn’t treating this with the gravity she had expected. People with strong communication skills were truly scary.

“I would—” Theora stopped, then tried again. “Is there a chance that you might change your mind? About your Main Quest.”

“I don’t think there is.”

Theora nodded. “Can you explain why?”

Bell bit her lip and looked through the room. “Let me guess. Perhaps you think that realising the System is responsible for this could make me reconsider? Or getting to know Dema, maybe?” 

“It wouldn’t,” Theora murmured with an empty gaze.

“Of course it wouldn’t.” Bell shook her head. “Look, I’m just as puzzled about your stance on this as you all are about mine. In a way, everyone is biased, and thus, I think arguing this point is moot.”

“Biased,” Theora repeated.

“Well, you have a crush on Dema, so you don’t want to kill her. It’s mind-boggling to me that you would value your feelings that highly, but I suppose some people are just like that. Meanwhile, None is compromised.”

Theora frowned. “Compromised?”

Bell gave a short laugh, then huffed in disbelief. “She’s literally filled up to the brink with Dema’s blood. Who knows what that’s doing to her. For all we know, she could be a puppet. A doll, completely under Dema’s control.”

“Does Dema even have Skills that would allow for that? You should have access to her sheet.”

Bell made her tentacles tie themselves into a ponytail. “Look, you especially should know how unreliable the Interface can be. Anyone who’d gander at your sheet would severely misunderstand your capabilities. And None is working on how to break it as we speak. Maybe others have already succeeded before? Dema could well be hiding things. A party screen is no proof.”

“But you don’t have any proof that Dema is evil, either. In the entire time that I’ve travelled with her, she hasn’t shown a hint of true deceit or malice.”

“Of course she hasn’t!” Bell shouted. “Otherwise she’d be dead!” Her hands clenched her knees. “Also, this isn’t about proof. To me, the fact that the System wants her gone is sufficient evidence. But that’s not going to convince you, because you have no trust in the System. Neither side can prove a single thing. This is about who or what we choose to believe in.”

Theora rolled the thoughts around in her mind. “But what if you’re wrong? And kill her. You wouldn’t be able to take it back.”

“Well, what if you’re wrong?” Bell yelled out, her hair struggling to wriggle out against its own bindings. Immediately, she closed her eyes, and tried to bring herself back down. “Look, alright. I mentioned we were all biased. That includes me. Though, at least I am able to acknowledge my bias.” She swallowed, seemingly regretting that last sentence. Unlatching her hand from her knee, she rubbed over her neck and shoulder, eyes shut. She sighed. “Alright, let’s try this. Want to know why I’m a hero?”

Theora nodded hesitantly. Hopefully she wouldn’t erode all of Bell’s patience. In the end, she only wanted to understand.

“So, the story goes like this. A little over nine hundred years ago, my homelands were attacked by an immensely powerful creature. It had nestled itself inside our sanctuary, and was working with a particularly hideous type of [Dream] magic. Most people living inside the sanctuary had fallen asleep, and a lot of them died as it fed on them. There was no way for us to do anything about it. Because anyone who was sent in succumbed to the spell.”

Bell rubbed her eyes. “Many people I knew… Well. Gone now. And its influence was growing. It would have either wiped us out, or displaced all survivors.”

Theora averted her gaze, and stared at the ground.

“Shortly after, the System dispatched a certain Heroine to my homelands. All alone. She walked into the tower, and recovered every single entrapped person, one after the other. All two thousand and twenty-six of them.” She snorted out a short laugh. “She wasn’t even immune to the [Dream] magic. She fell asleep like a brick. And then started sleepwalking. When everyone was safe, she entered the place and blew the thing out of existence in one fell swoop.”

This was painful to listen to. Bell was leaving the most devastating part right out.

“I saw you, back then,” Bell said. “You and the System decided to rescue us. My people would barely exist without you. Wouldn’t exist without the System and without a heroine that didn’t refuse her calling.”

“I destroyed your sanctuary,” Theora murmured.

Bell shrugged. “Sanctuaries can be rebuilt. Are you telling me you regret it?”

“I regret destroying the tower.”

“Why? There was no way to avoid it. What, you think you could have ended that creature without [Obliterate]? That’s ridiculous.”

“I messed up. I accidentally blew a hole into reality. It’s still there. It will be, forever.”

Bell frowned. “What are you talking about? You didn’t ‘mess up’. That’s just how the Skill works. It’s right there in the description. What would you have done differently?”

Theora bit her lip.

Bell’s hair squelched around for a while as she was simply mustering Theora. Her frown slowly dissolved into an expression of slight worry, and she asked again. “What would you have done?”

Theora absent-mindedly looked over the shapes on the marble ground.

Back then, she’d barely understood the implications of using that terrifying Skill. Had barely known how to properly apply it, hadn’t known how to reduce the impact it had on the fabric of the world.

“You can’t say it?” Bell inquired. 

“I should have done better,” Theora muttered. 

Bell sighed, showing a pitiful expression. “You did good. Don’t worry about it. And, you know what? You did so well, you inspired me to become a heroine too. Because I saw what you were capable of, and I saw what differences we could make. And in those years since then, I feel like I have made a very sizable difference. The System has allowed me to become strong, to help people, and to do good. So, I am biased in its favour.”

She stared at Theora, her eyes blazing with a rare intensity. “What if Dema ends up destroying the world? What if all my friends and my people die because I refused to fulfil my duty, for sentimental reasons? I’m not going to take that risk. I won’t stand at their graves and wonder what the world might look like had I simply trusted the one entity I owe my entire existence to. Who let me provide some aid to my peers in this cruel world.”

She wiped tears out of her eyes. “I know I can’t win,” she said, voice shaking. “I know that with both None and you protecting her, there is no way I can. But still, I couldn’t live with myself if I hadn’t at least given it my all. I couldn’t look back at the times when I had chances if, in the end, it all came tumbling down.”

She sniffled and started to unwrap some tentacles from her ponytail to help with wiping her discharge from her face. “I mean, look at Dema’s sheet. She is scary. So scary.” She made a half-sound between scoff and whimper. “[Earth] magic, at its logical conclusion. If she wanted to, she could tear the world apart. And she— she doesn’t even seem sorry. She keeps teasing us with how much she’s scheming, and—”

“Bell,” Theora cut in. “She doesn’t need to show humility to be deserving of life.”

Bell sobbed, and nodded. “I know. I know. Shouldn’t have said that. It was a bad thing to say.” She breathed in and out heavily a few times, and tried to calm back down. “It’s just— You all act like I am the unreasonable one. Like I am just cute and misguided, and not to be taken seriously, like I am stubborn and wrong, but you don’t have any proof for your side either! I could be wrong, but you could be too, and the thing is, if you are wrong, we are all going to die. All my friends, my family, and everyone, and everything, gone. Everything.”

Theora pushed the box aside and slid forward, coming to a halt right in front of Bell. She held out both hands in an offer, and Bell just stared at her confused.

“What?” she asked.

“Give me your hands.”

Bell swallowed, sniffled, and stared at Theora’s palms for a few seconds. “Why?”

“I want to tell you something, and I want you to know that I mean it.”

Bell’s gaze went up, wide and confused and bleary, slowly darting between Theora’s eyes, until she nodded, and put her cold and wet hands in Theora’s — still smeared with tears and a little gooey, her little tentacle shaped fingers limp and weak.

“It is true that Dema is under my protection,” Theora then said, and gently pressed down on Bell’s fingers. “But the world is under my protection too.”

Bell stared, opening her mouth halfway, but not saying anything. Theora went on, “If there was an Ancient Evil plotting to destroy the world, it could never, ever win against me. You understand? You and your family and everyone you know, are safe.”

Theora nodded, gazing into Bell’s dazzled eyes. “That’s a promise.”