“Hey, little rabbit!” a raspy voice issued from behind after a while. “Alright if I join you?”

Theora turned around to see Dema completely coated head to toe in drying, flaking grey clay. She must have found a mud bath.

“Of course it’s alright if you join me,” Theora answered. “You can always join me, if you want to.”

For a second, Dema’s eyes looked like they were about to melt, then she nodded. “Just figured you might want a bit of rest. Alone-time, you know! Wait, ’s that tea I smell?”

Her eyes fell on a cup next to Theora, and widened ever so slightly as she traipsed ahead and knelt down next to the lava stream. She swallowed, looking between Theora and the cup with a certain yearning gaze. Her eyes literally lit up in amber glow.

“… Would you like a cup?”

“Yes!” Dema let out. “Yes, I wanna! Gimme one!”

“Alright,” Theora went, and proceeded to prepare it. 

In the meantime, Dema started picking at the grey mud, snipping the flakes into the stream. It left powder on her skin even where she cleared it off, and she made no attempts to remove it from her torn cloak. Several strands of hair stuck to her face, giving Theora the strong urge to fix it.

Soon, Dema found herself entranced by the scent and taste, grinning wide. “Lava tea,” she said. “Lava tea!”

Ah. Hadn’t something like this happened before? Her exhaustion dizzied Theora’s mind for a second as the memory resurfaced. Almost involuntarily, she reached out with her fingers, stopping very close to Dema’s face, who was staring back, mouth half-open.

And then, Theora pushed a strand of Dema’s hair from her mud-covered forehead, tucking it behind one of those long ears.

Just like back then.

Dema gave a small smile. “Why, tryna get me in the mood for something?” she hummed, an eyebrow raised. “Gotta say, it’s working.”

Theora blinked. “What?”

Dema shrugged innocently. “Don’t mind me, just saying things. This is like when you first made me shale tea! Practising for our date?”

A slight amount of blood rushed into Theora’s head. “Something like that,” she murmured.

[im//possibility] had been the culprit back then, making it almost impossible for Dema to fix her own hair, so Theora had done it for her instead. 

And since then, decades had passed. Decades during which Theora hadn’t worked on a single one of her new Skills; they were still sitting around at low Levels. 

Because Hallmark had passed in the blink of an eye.

And she still felt the exhaustion in her bones. She hadn’t had any rest since then; even the journey they were on now regularly pushed Theora’s mind into a state of alertness. 

At that thought, she immediately perked up. “Where are Bell and Iso?”

Dema shrugged. “Probably off somewhere, playing. They know where we are, have the party map after all.”

Theora took a deep breath.

“Hey li’l rabbit,” Dema started. “You alright?”

Theora rubbed her eyes. “Can’t sleep very well lately.”

She couldn’t even attempt to help a town in need without it actually being a scheme to get Dema killed. What else was a scheme? Were Bell and Iso fine off on their own, or would she find Iso torn into pieces again, or Bell smeared into jellyfish goop?

What if they were being pulled into another plot for an awful end, all while Theora sat here, selfishly drinking lava tea, getting all distracted by looking into Dema’s pretty and muddied face.

Or, what if something happened to them while Theora decided to close her eyes and sleep for just a second too long. She was close to passing out almost every second of the day, her mind on the brink of shutting off — but whenever she finally did, at night, when she gave in, instead her brain rattled her back awake, to be watchful and alert.

She was on a quest to visit other realities now, to find pieces of something she didn’t know. Was it another plot to cause harm, or would she genuinely help people by collecting the Fragments? She wouldn’t get any rest until they arrived at the library, and then, what kind of book was it that Dema liked so much?

Was it a cosy story that would allow them to spend a few days in calm?

Or one that required focus? A dangerous one, where people could die?

From what Theora understood, Dema liked stories with characters in very questionable or immoral circumstances and relationships. Was her favourite story one of those too?

“Why not?” Dema asked, and Theora’s eyes darted to her in confusion.

“Why not what?”

“You said you can’t sleep very well.”

“Right.” Theora nodded, trying to remember. “Thoughts,” she said. “Waking up a lot, unable to fall back asleep.”

There, she slipped again. Allowing herself to forget the very topic they’d been talking about.

It was dangerous, for they would start visiting other realities soon. What if she were to enter another reality that compromised her memory, and then forget she was already inside one.

Theora looked around, finding herself surrounded by lava and fumes and Dema’s coal scent.

Where was Tras?

The thought vanished as soon as it had come to her.

Was this not a dream, not another reality? How could she be sure? What if they’d already entered another place, and it had slipped her mind?

“Hey,” she heard Dema’s voice pull her back, and felt a soft hand grasp her own. “How about we find a nice little place next and just take a few days of vacation?” Dema asked. “Like, something cosy! Gonna have you sleep tight!”

Theora blinked. Could they do that? Postpone on her side quest for a while, postpone on… the date?

Just when she was about to answer, she heard Isobel’s giggle in the distance, and the clacks of her feet on the rock ground. The party screen showed that Bell was with her, both heading towards Dema and Theora. Within a few minutes, they all sat together, and Theora prepared more tea.

Even Bell had gotten herself to try it after a good measure of reluctance. 

“I wonder if you can make lava moss tea,” Isobel mused.

“Yeah!” Dema jumped in. “Oh, maybe next time Iso gets blown up, we can fix her together!”

“Lava moss tea adhesive,” Bell muttered. “Sure, yes, do that to your little girl.”

Dema opened her mouth in mock-shock. “Hey! Only the best for her! No reason to be snarky. It’s gonna work big time!”

“I do wonder what will happen to her eventually,” Bell mused, grazing a tentacle over Iso’s head. “She’s warm, because Theora’s tea is warm. What does your Skill say? 200 years? Will Iso become cold when your Skill expires?”

“All the more reason to give her new tea!” Dema said. “Lava tea!”

Theora looked at the river streaming by. “We won’t always have access to lava.” 

“Yeah,” Dema said. “Big bummer we don’t have anyone with a [Fire] affinity. We only got [Water], [Plant], [Earth] and [Blood]. So, no making lava ourselves.”

“Yes,” Bell muttered, rolling her eyes. “Big ‘bummer’.”

Dema’s eyes stood still on Bell for a while, her face softening somewhat, looking almost blissful with a small smile.

“What?” Bell asked when she noticed.

Dema shook her head gently. “Nothing! Just, nostalgic. The way you talk to me reminds me of home a bit. Dang, all of this reminds me of home!”

“Home,” Theora echoed. “Hell?”

“Yeah! Like, I think, if I dove down these lava lakes, if I was gonna weasel myself through the shafts and capillaries… maybe I’d reach home.”

Hell, the faraway place located at the core of the planet, among beaming hot magma. Home of demons and monsters alike. Although they needed to take on material shapes to live up on the ground.

Just like Isobel needed special accommodations to be able to live on the ground too. She came from a different kind of hell — the ocean. 

Bell’s people — Medusae — hailed from an archipelago in the south, and while they required lots of water in their everyday lives, they usually lived on land.

They all had considerations that limited where and how they could be, and meanwhile, Theora was so broken and empty that she got tasked with breaking out of reality into a great nothingness where life was impossible, and the thought of it didn’t even seem all that strange to her.

In fact, maybe living out there, living nowhere, would be easier. No need to move muscles, no need to sleep or wake, no need to exist, apart from the vague notion of self required not to be smudged beyond recognition by the immaterial pressure of the void.

Theora took a sip of tea and felt the warmth enter her body. Throat, chest, down her arms, a hearth in her belly. 

Or maybe she could stay here.

“Do you want to go back home one day?” Theora asked, eyes on Dema. “Pay a visit?”

Dema raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I thought—” she started, but stopped, and looked at the others as if asking for help. “Thought we weren’t gonna split up! Like, I follow you, and all that! Can’t run off to hell or li’l rabbit will be mad.”

Theora frowned. “I imagined we would go together.”

Dema’s head twitched a few times as she was processing that information. “It’s a ball of magma, like, hot as the sun. Not a place you can just go! I’d have to, like, go back to demon shape to even try!”

“Well, it’s up to you,” Theora said. 

Dema stared for a moment, then smiled her mischievous smile. “Well then, what about your home? Gonna take me there one day?”

Something about that question knocked Theora wide awake. She felt something break in the back of her mind, as if a shape of spun glass burst into a thousand pieces.

Why? What had just happened?

Was it the thought of her hometown? How long had she not been there? She knew it probably still existed, for Amyd was born in that same place. Theora blinked a few times, trying to understand. Something was going wrong here, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

“If you want to visit, we can visit,” Theora murmured, attempting to pull herself together, pushing the shapeless and sharp thoughts aside. “One day.”

“Alright!” Dema yelped out. Then, she scrunched up her face. “Anyway… What were we on about again? I think we got distracted!”

“Lava Moss Tea,” Bell said.

Dema nodded. “Right! To see if we can fix Isobel with that.”

“I’m fine!” Iso said. “I’m made of the sturdiest rock!”

Bell shook her head, exasperated. “No, you are not.” She stared at the others. “How did any of you survive this long? None of you have a sense of danger.”

“[Immortality] helps with that a lot!” Dema chirped. “You’re immortal too, right?”

“No,” Bell replied, and put her mask back on as she had finished her tea. “No, I am not. I am able to biologically revert into different stages of my lifecycle, which makes me sturdy and prevents me from dying of old age. That’s very different from being immortal. We still get sick, and die in accidents, and things like that.”

“Oh! That’s why you wear protection? So you don’t get sick from the fumes?”

Bell shrugged. “Adventuring already accumulates tons of Minipop. Don’t want to gather more than necessary.”

“Mini-what?”

“Minipop!” Iso said. “It’s like… a measurement her people use? For example, if you do something really dangerous, like fighting a strong monster, there is a certain possibility that you might die. It’s dangerous! So, they assign a number to it. ‘How likely am I to die from this activity?’ And they just accumulate that number over time, so they know how much risk they’ve taken in their life. On average, a jelly person will die when they’ve accumulated one million Minipop, or, in other words, one Pop!”

Bell shrugged. “It’s more useful than age, because age is somewhat meaningless to us. If I spend my entire life in bed, I’m very unlikely to die. Meanwhile, if I spend thirty years adventuring, I am very likely to die. So, when we talk about how much experience someone has, or how much more danger they might still live through statistically, we just give our age in Minipop instead. It also helps us avoid unnecessary risk and die needlessly early.”

Dema nodded, although by her expression she seemed to have some trouble keeping up. “So, how old are you?”

“About twenty.”

Dema blinked. “Twenty what?”

“Twenty Pop.”

Dema glanced to the others, unsure if she missed something. “Wait… but doesn’t that mean—”

“Yes. I should have popped twenty times over. That’s how dangerous being a hero is for us, and I’ve been doing it for quite a while. It’s just statistics, so there’s no guarantee you’ll die when you reach one Pop, and there’s no guarantee you won’t die after collecting your first Minipop.” 

“Still, like, statistically speaking,” Isobel started, “Like… Sure, outliers exist, but it’s very unlikely to be that far outside…”

“I suppose I’m lucky. Plus, I’m using standard Minipop estimations and measurements, but I’m a [Barrier-Mage]. Makes me a lot more resistant, so those values are exaggerated when applied to me.”

“Damn!” Dema let out. “Didn’t know you were so old. Thought you were, like, a baby!”

“Oh, yeah, I’m old. I’ve probably collected an entire Pop just by confronting you. Meeting the Ancient Evil with intent to kill, not something one is expected to survive. Reduced my lifespan by a thousand years, probably.”

“Not how statistics work!” Isobel interjected cheerfully.

“I know, I know,” Bell said, rolling her eyes. “We just treat it that way, because functionally, it results in the same.”

“Wouldn’t have killed you!” Dema chirped.

“Yes, I know. I know.”

“We should move,” Theora said when she saw everyone had finished their tea. “Let’s not force Bell to wear her mask overnight. We can continue our journey and find a safer place to sleep.”

And with that, they packed up, and left it all behind. The gorgeous glowing lava, the toxic fumes, the prickling sound of molten rock cooling down and cracking, the place of hot and heavy footbaths and mud springs in the ground. The place of danger — if Bell or Iso slipped or got caught in a fume explosion, they might have gotten seriously harmed.

Or, perhaps not?

Maybe Bell would have simply cast a barrier of some kind. Maybe Isobel was completely safe around her.

And that System and its plots? Sure, it was probably planning something, but Theora wasn’t alone anymore. She’d cleared Afterthoughts for decades without finding a single clue as to what might have caused the plague, and then Bell and Iso had showed up and solved the mystery together with Dema in the span of a single day.

Maybe the System could outsmart Theora, but Bell and Dema and Iso, they were different. Perhaps — just perhaps — Theora could lean on them, if just a little.

 

Hours later, a good measure away from the volcano, under the starlight on some hill, Theora laid on the ground, staring up into the sky, waiting for sleep to bind her. Camp all properly set-up, her companions around her.

Now, everyone was safe. 

Crack.

She blinked.

Somehow, with that thought, Theora felt like she stepped on shards of glass. A bright clinking sound lingered in her head, and tugged at her mind. Pulled uncomfortably, although she wasn’t sure why.

It kept jerking at the back of her brain, throwing wrenches at her thoughts. Even an hour later, almost asleep, the fog of drowsiness surrounding her, that thought still kept straining her and tugging and pulling.

Everyone was safe.

Was everyone safe?