The Grand Observatory of Fiction was truly grand. A giant dome, visible at the horizon even hours before arriving, with an immense aura almost rivalling that of Dema. 

Dema, who simply stared at it wide-eyed, ever since it had come into view. Whenever it got hidden behind trees or hills or buildings, she gave little side glances to Theora, not daring to ask whether this was actually where they were headed.

Bell and Iso had ventured off to do more side-quests and take care of other business, while Dema and Theora would go on their ‘date’. Theora knew that it was probably bad to call it that, mostly because she had no clue what actually awaited them. But, depending on what kind of story ‘To Hell With the Author’ would turn out to be, maybe they’d get a few moments of calm.

A few weeks had passed since she’d met Harrik inside the Shade, most of which she’d spent asleep.

They had decided on a prolonged stay at the inn. Her [im//possibility]-escapade had left too much of a mark to be ignored, especially paired with the lingering exhaustion of Hallmark, and everyone agreed that now was the time to let her make up for all of it.

“I suggest you sleep for five to ten years,” Bell had said like a physician, although Theora had no intention of actually being gone for that long. She briefly considered entering her travelling coat to sleep there, but even though it was a powerful item and fairly large inside, it wasn’t made to accommodate human conditions, and while Theora had been ready to ignore that part, the others had not. After all, the coat was no Shade who could alter its own within.

“You can’t sleep where there is no air,” Bell had said.

“I’m pretty sure I can.”

“No, mom,” Isobel had gone, “She’s saying you’re not allowed to! No sleeping where there is no air!”

Taking the locket of time warping out of the interdimensional cloak wasn’t a very good idea either, because its radius was actually quite large, and Theora didn’t want to risk anyone walking into it potentially losing years of their lives in comparison to their loved ones.

As such, regrettably, the item was, for now, mostly a means to keep her ingredients from spoiling. 

Harrik and his sister left after a few days. Apparently, he’d used that locket to flee from some type of persecution, and keep his sister safe. These events lay hundreds of years in the past now though. He’d apologised about a dozen more times for not destroying the locket sooner — he simply hadn’t ever felt quite safe without it.

And with that, once Theora had gotten at least a little bit of rest, they decided to move on, and finally made for the last part of their journey towards the Observatory.

“So,” Dema went, as the Observatory was almost impossible to avoid, “That’s where you’re taking us?”

“Yes.”

“Which… Which… Wait. Are we gonna enter a book? That’s the Grand Observatory, right? I heard people talk about it in Hallmark.”

“Yes,” Theora confirmed.

“So… Which book?”

“Your favourite.”

“My favourite!” Dema let out. “Yes! My favourite. Uh… What’s my favourite?”

Theora frowned. “You don’t know what your favourite book is? Hell and Balinth told me.”

Dema scratched her head. “Well… I do know, but…”

“It is ‘To Hell with the Author’.”

Dema came to a halt and stared. The winds were going strong, splattering her hair around against her face. “Our… date… is gonna be in…”

“Is that a problem?”

“No!” she assured, and her expression turned from confusion into a grin. “I love the story! You’re gonna love it, too! Especially Gonell. Oh my, you’re gonna meet Gonell!” The realisations hit Dema one after the other, and her eyes started gleaming. “I just didn’t think you’d wanna enter that kind of story!”

“Why not? I don’t know a lot about it. Is there something wrong with it?”

“Well,” Dema started, trying to find words. “It’s a bit of a tough one? Not very nice.”

“But, it’s only a story, right?”

“True… I guess it’s gonna be fine!”

Dema turned to the dome again, giggling.

It was made out of white rock, perfectly smooth except for little lines engraved in an intricate and complex geometrical pattern on its outside — mana veins, most likely, part of what enabled the structure to do what it did, Theora figured. It featured a single entrance, larger than a building on its own, with no apparent mechanism to close it up.

They slowly made their way around and went in.

The inside was a huge hollow sphere, stretching far above and far below into the ground. Fog had gathered to the point where seeing the further side of the hall was hard. Thousands of library shelves draped the inside walls, with ladders, stairs, and mana-powered elevators connecting hundreds of levels. Some paths led a bit further into the sphere, towards islands containing little areas to read and study.

“Woah!” Dema went, and every step seemed to make her more excited. For a mage, this construction was likely an incredible marvel to behold; it looked like a work of impossible arcane finesse. “Look, so many of them!” she yelled, pointing at the mana crystals.

There were a myriad floating in the air. These crystals were likely why the Observatory had been constructed here; their density and strength was likely comparable to Hallmark.

The area was so large that giant eagle-like birds were using them to nest. 

Dema looked around in curiosity. “Not many people here, huh!”

Some sat in the reading islands, some walked across paths, in the distance. Overall, the space looked almost empty.

At the very centre of the sphere was a gigantic basin of concentrated mana, surrounded by structures that sucked little strands of energy from the crystals and the walls, as if continually filling up the reserves.

“I think that’s where we will enter,” Theora murmured, pointing at a number of rock sarcophagi floating around the basin.

Dema laughed. “Damn, they’re gonna kill us! Oh look, someone’s coming!”

A person was floating out from a canal at the lower end of the Observatory; apparently, more structure was built into the earth outside the sphere. Theora watched them fly up towards them, and soon recognised her as a very small and chubby Lyph with dark violet skin, short crimson-red hair, pointy ears and wide robes floating around her. She held a clipboard in her hand, a feather that seemed to belong to the kind of bird native to this dome, carved in a way so one could write with it. In addition, a small blob of ink floated above a corner of the paper.

“Welcome to the Grand Observatory of Fiction,” she said with a deep voice when she arrived. “I’m Elsinaria. Can I help you somehow?”

“Yeah!” Dema said. “We wanted to visit a book!”

She nodded. “Do you have the name of that book? Or a personal copy of it?”

“To Hell with the Author,” Theora said. “I have a copy of it with me.”

“Alright.” Her eyes lost focus for a moment as she looked at a System prompt. “That book has not been visited before. We do not have a premade copy of its world accessible. As such, we can prepare one.”

With a snap of her fingers, a burst of mana came free, and Theora felt herself become much lighter, just as when she’d used the Orb of Seven Wishes to gain flight. A moment later, she started floating.

“Only works within the mana field of the dome,” Elsinaria said. “You can follow me to the centre. There, we can evaluate your book and determine a waiting period.”

They did as told and started making their way.

“Waiting period!” Dema let out. “How long?”

Elsinaria turned around, and floated backwards. Her expression was blank and a bit bored as she gave the explanation. “This Observatory takes in ambient mana to construct the worlds of fictions,” she said, “However, we mostly live off donations. Depending on the size of the story and its world, as well as that world’s complexity, we determine a waiting list. It’s currently quite long, for many people have an interest in visiting worlds.”

“Ah, I see!” Dema nodded, and everything she heard about this place made her seem more excited. “So like, you gotta wait until you’ve got enough mana to make a new world? And then all of it, poof, gone!”

“Not quite. Constructing the world initially costs some amount of mana, but most of the energy is required while having an instance of it active. While nobody is inside, we can reduce it to a low-energy mode. Donations mostly enable us to have more worlds open at a time, and store more of them in our archives. Therefore, they are much appreciated and help our collection grow long-term.”

“Cool!”

After arriving at the centre, Elsinaria accepted the copy of Theora’s book and slotted it into a little contraption at the side of the basin. She studied some readouts, made some notes, nodded a few times, and eventually turned back around to the others.

“A fairly complex piece of writing, with a rich world. A decent amount of people have read it, so there is ambient information in the flow of mana of the world, helping with accuracy and reducing internal conflicts. Waiting time would be between ten and fifteen years.”

Theora nodded.

That didn’t sound too bad. Dema could use the time to read all the books in this library, since reading was her newfound hobby, and meanwhile, Theora could sleep a bit more and maybe send a few letters.

Perhaps she could even sleep while floating around. She really wanted to try that.

Meanwhile, Dema approached the basin glowing with brilliant blue mana, and patted a hand against it.

Suddenly, Theora felt a massive aura surge build up, and noticed Dema’s MP-bar drop by a fifth on the party status.

The aura of the basin more than doubled.

Elsinaria’s face slipped ever so slightly, but she somehow managed to quickly readjust towards a professional expression. She gulped, checked another few readouts. Finally, she nodded, saying, “I want to issue a correction; my earlier statement was inaccurate. Waiting time in this case should be closer to about zero seconds. We can start whenever you are ready.”

Theora had never realised how much of a privilege it was to travel with a strong mage. In any case, the dream of sleeping while floating inside a giant sphere slowly crumbled before her mind’s eye as she saw Elsinaria further the preparations of creating their very own world of fiction to enter.

“It is mostly safe inside,” she said. “However, try not to die a sudden death. As long as you die slowly, the Observatory’s system can shut the world down properly and get you out safely. If you die quickly, it could kill you here too. You can leave the instance of your world and re-enter at a later time, the state of it will be saved if it is shut down properly. That said, it will be a real world, and travelling between states is impossible; meaning, if characters you care about die, there is no way for us to resurrect them, and we can’t fix damage you do there from the outside either. You will be confined to the rules of the story you are in, meaning rules of this reality that you are accustomed to might not apply. While security is a priority, I will warn you that this is not some kind of riskless, safe sandbox. It was initially created for research and not leisure.”

“I see! No dying and no letting anybody die!” Dema chirped. “Gonna be hard for this story, though…”

“Also, be sure to stay mostly within the narrative. The Observatory automatically takes ambient information from author notes, derivative works, public analysis, and common knowledge, and uses interpolation algorithms to fix holes and internal inconsistencies of the story, but if you veer too far off its original intent or scope, you may be met with glitches or erratic behaviours that can affect that reality or your immersion.”

She checked her notepad, then nodded. “Building the world will take about an hour,” she finished. Then, she pointed towards two of the closer sarcophagi. “You can already enter if you so wish; a magically induced sleep will ease you into the world. You shall wake up inside it. Do you wish to be added to the story as extras, or inhabit the roles of characters that already exist within it?”

Dema’s eyes widened. “Added! Added, you hear me! Don’t give us any of the main roles!”

Despite the sudden outburst, Elsinaria simply nodded. “Very well. If you get added as extras, there is a chance you might be split upon arrival to keep the internal structure of the story intact. However, it shouldn’t take long to meet up again if you follow the story’s main plot line. Good luck, and have a nice time.”

With that, she floated away, and Dema shouted a “Thank you!” after her.

“Alright,” Theora said. “That was… easier than I imagined. Are you ready to go?”

“Yea! You have any questions?”

Theora stared blankly. “Rather than that, is there anything I should know?”

Dema shrugged. “It’s a book! We can just see what happens. But like, it ain’t a kind world! Gotta be careful what you say. A single wrong word is gonna land you in heaps of trouble.”

“I will be careful,” Theora said. She would simply always speak the truth, responsibly.

“Oh, also!” Dema continued, “You can do whatever you want in the story, but just remember, if you rock the boat, it will change the outcome of the plot. So if you wanna see how things turn out, no rocking the boat!”

“Do you wish for us to experience the original story closely?”

Dema put her chin in her hand and thought for a moment. “Guess it would be nice!” she said. “Kinda wanna show it all to you. I really like it. I’m a bit scared and nervous because like, I like it a lot, and I hope you will too!”

Theora nodded. “Alright. In that case, no rocking the boat. I shall be well-behaved and mindful of what I say, so you can enjoy the story you love so much.”

Dema’s eyes melted a little. “Not gonna lie, I’m getting really excited. This is gonna be great! Let’s go!”

With that, she opened a sarcophagus, and hopped inside. Soon, Theora found her own and followed suit.

As it closed around her and she could feel the mana flow in, and the weariness of induced sleep take over, she tried her best to remember the new rules.

Don’t mess up the story. Be careful what you say. And, don’t die.

Yes, she could do that.