“I’m sorry,” Theora said. “I didn’t realise this bed was occupied.”

The monster hissed. It cramped itself back into the further half of the bed’s underside, like a cloud repelled by an invisible force.

The black streaks of its body reached almost beyond the frame, as if whirled up by strong winds, but then bulged away where they would leave the safety of shadows. Two ember red eyes of differing sizes were embedded in its body, continuously shrinking until, every now and then, something akin to a blink widened them up again.

And, beneath those eyes, it had a mouth. Crinkled and dry, elongated and toothless. After issuing the hiss, it went back to slow and creaky breaths.

If anything, the monster seemed scared.

Theora didn’t want to upset it with sudden movements, so she calmly gazed upon it, and asked, “Do you need help?”

For a second, the creature stared.

And then, it lurched.

Like a piece of large cotton cloth, it jumped forward, wrapping around Theora’s face. She rose up from the bedside and sat back down, all the while the rest of the monster engulfed her like a blanket, squeezing tight. 

She gently squeezed back.

This seemed to be a Shade. A mostly peaceful type of creature that ate parts of reality to build its own pocket dimension similar to Theora’s cloak.

That said, if a person got too close, a Shade might accidentally gobble them up. And Theora had a slight feeling that this was about to happen to her. Except, it didn’t feel like an accident at all. Was this how the missing person had vanished? It didn’t make a lot of sense, though. These beings did not typically wish to have people inside of them. They’d get a belly-ache. They would spit them back out. Shades couldn’t easily digest sentient beings.

Suddenly, the pressure disappeared, and everything was different.

No more bed under her. No more sounds issuing from the window. No more smells, no more air, nothing.

Theora was gone.

Gone from the inn, gone from her friends, gone from… Anywhere.

She blinked, but it made no difference, for she was engulfed in endless darkness. Her body was light from the absence of the world, her mind clear from its oppressing influence.

She curled down, pulling her legs up against her chest, lying on what felt like her side. Not that she was actually touching anything, nor was she falling. Simply, there was nothing around, Theora was all there was.

She’d been eaten, and stuffed into an extradimensional space.

“Hello?”

No reply.

Theora waited, but nothing ended up happening. The Interface of the System still existed, but she needed to focus strongly on it to appear within her vision, and she had no access to the outside world; couldn’t see her friends’ stats or whereabouts, and the Interfaces disappeared the second she lost focus.

For a while, she pondered what to do, but couldn’t really come up with anything productive.

Theora was a cannon to point at things, and then it would go off and destroy whatever she was pointed at. Other than that, she had no useful Skills to speak of. She couldn’t use [Obliterate] without either harming the Shade or risking to harm the other person kept inside — if the person was really here.

In other words, she was stuck, wasn’t she? No way out. Nothing to do. Captured in this endless dark, in nothingness. Her heart started pounding stronger. Her fingertips started tingling a little.

Oh, this was great.

It was the perfect time to sleep, completely undisturbed.

Sure, Bell and Iso would eventually find the Shade and free her, maybe even within the hour, but until then, she could make herself a little cosy, in the belly of this extradimensional Shade.

After all, she didn’t want to upset its stomach by doing anything drastic. 

The strongest Heroine in the world, and yet there was nothing she could do when faced with this beginner-level quest monster. 

The same couldn’t be said for Bell and Iso, of course. Those two were competent, had access to a lot of utility-type Skills.

Theora could just wait to be rescued.

“Come save me,” she murmured into the void, somehow feeling really happy to be able to say these words herself for once.

She smiled a little at that thought and only wished Dema could be there with her, but eventually, she dozed off.

At first, it wasn’t true sleep; she was still halfway conscious, and recognised a few peculiarities she was too exhausted to properly address. For one, a Skill of hers tried to reach out. She didn’t know which one; it probably wasn’t [Obliterate], for that Skill wasn’t very social, but it could have been any of the others, probably. Did [Head in the Clouds] have something to say? There was no sky to look at, so Theora couldn’t have listened to it anyway. She was too tired to imagine a sky of clouds in her head clearly enough to enable the Skill’s use.

It didn’t matter anyway. Her Skills only existed to tease her. They’d make her feel a little bit upset in an endearing way, and then she’d harrumph, and then she’d pout for a bit, and then she’d fall asleep anyway.

And so, she ignored the little shouts from her Skill that barely scratched the surface of her consciousness. Sleep came first. After all, that’s what Dema had asked of her. To rest.

The other peculiar sensation she felt while dozing away was some kind of pull. Something tugged at her, rather gently, almost like a cute little leech, sapping her energy to engorge itself. Theora’s wealth of power was large enough, so she didn’t mind. Whatever fed on her, it didn’t do it in a way that hurt, it was being gentle about it, and so Theora just let it happen. 

Just like she’d let that monster pull her away from that inn.

Because, the truth was, if Theora hadn’t been so tired, she could have likely resisted. She could have just stayed where she was, but maybe that would have hurt the little Shade. 

That scared little Shade, hidden away underneath her bed. The likely culprit behind the disappearance. The reason for parts of the inn’s code of conduct; don’t go near shadows, don’t get distracted by noises, stay in the lights. Doing so would have kept anyone from being engulfed by accident. The staff of the inn would certainly not have had the capabilities to evict such a creature, if they even knew it was a Shade that caused the disappearance to begin with.

And as such, the calls from the Skill eventually faded, and Theora grew accustomed to whatever was leeching off her, and eventually fell truly asleep.

Every now and then, she’d retrieve consciousness for what felt like a few seconds, but this space was so entirely cosy that it was hard for her to properly get back up. No sounds, no scents, neither heat nor cold, completely shut off from the world, she finally got to rest.

 

That is until something scratched her cheek. Grass? It sure smelled like grass. She blinked, disturbed by a ray of sunshine on one half of her face, the other shielded by the canopy of a tree.

She lay in a small clearance, on her side, body heavy. When she turned on her back, her arm just slumped to the other side, as she stared up into the bright light. 

There was no sky. Just brightness. She took a deep breath and rubbed what felt like mountains of sleepy dust out of her eyes. Meanwhile, a quiet groan escaped her. She swallowed, her throat dry, and wetted her crumbled lips. Her hair was a total mess. 

She pressed herself up into a sitting position, and then stretched. And oh, what a stretch it was. When had she ever felt so rested? This must have been one of the best nights she’d had in a long time. She smoothed the wrinkles out of her nightgown; it had a few grass stains now.

Her gaze went over the rest of the clearance, and immediately, some things seemed odd to her. 

“E-excuse me?” a light voice interrupted her thoughts before they could truly form. It came from the edge of the clearance and belonged to a bearded man with short black hair and brown skin. He looked rather rattled; his clothes were patched over, and he had a large backpack. He stared at Theora with an uncertain expression, sweating slightly, mouth half-open.

“Yes?” Theora answered, voice still a bit laden from sleep, so she cleared her throat.  

He gulped. “Are you alright, Ma’am?”

“What? Yes, I am. Why?”

He gave a little sigh of relief. “It’s just — well, I’m glad you are awake. Do you need any help? Water? Food?”

Theora scrunched up her face, trying to get her thoughts together. She’d fallen asleep inside a Shade, and now she was in a skyless forest, with another person. Alright, at least that far, she could follow. It seemed to check out. 

“You don’t happen to have stayed at a bathhouse at some point before getting here, have you?” Theora ventured, and the man’s response was clear. He swallowed, then nodded.

Again, for maybe the third time in just a few days, Theora found herself smiling. Oh, what a good feeling that was. Smiling was almost fun.

“That’s good, then. We’ll just have to be rescued. Shades aren’t typically malevolent, and with how gentle it was with me despite being scared, I was hoping you would be alright too.”

“Shades?” he asked in a high voice. “You mean the — the monster?”

Theora nodded. “I assume we are still inside?”

“Inside?” He was getting increasingly confused by Theora’s every word, and she couldn’t help but feel a little bad. “It—it… I couldn’t wake you up. You wouldn’t wake up. And it kept coming to you night after night, and it… it fed off you. Burrowed over you — I couldn’t stop it, and it would suck away at you, and…”

“Oh, yeah,” Theora said, and nodded. “So that’s what it was.”

Right after she finished that sentence, her smile wavered.

What had he just said?

Night after night?

“How long have I been here?”

The man swallowed, looking a bit wary. “How long do you think you’ve been here?”

Theora blinked. “Maybe a few hours? A night?”

“You got abducted from the bath house too?” As Theora nodded, his face slumped. “Did you — were you there alone?”

Theora shook her head, frowning. “With friends.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he let out. “Oh god. Oh, I’m sorry.”

Theora took a closer look at him. Rings under his eyes. Greying strands in his hair, skin weathered by stress. His clothes seemed washed-out and old, partly torn but well taken-care of, patched multiple times, as if he had no other set and needed to make do with this. His hands had calluses, he was barefoot, but didn’t seem to mind the harsh forest ground. 

A lot of… stuff was poking out of the bags of his backpack. Rods, contraptions, some raw materials, like branches.

He looked like he’d been living in the woods for a while.

“How long have I been here?” Theora asked again, and the man grazed through his hair, looking into a forest, a bit resigned.

“You came here about… It’s been…” He closed his eyes, eventually scrunching them together, and opened them back up with the words, “I think, about a month. I’m sorry.”

Ah… No wonder Theora felt so rested. And that was just the time she’d been here, in this forest. How much time had she spent in that shapeless world before that? With how good she was feeling, it could have well been years. Though, even she would have noticed if she’d slept for that long… right?

Regardless, it also meant that nobody had come to save her.

Perhaps she’d underestimated the situation.