The pieces of Theora’s sword cluttered into the grass. The sky split open along the incision and what leaked out was the fabric behind the curtain of reality. Like black, semi-transparent goo oozing from a deep wound, the sky distorted at the fringes, a slashed oil painting breaking up into little flakes threatening to fall, letters whirling among the breaches.

Theora stared up in mute horror. Memories of her training grounds flashed up in her mind.

Gonell took only a second or two to arrive and land on the grass. She looked up for a moment, confused. Then, she turned. “Are you alright?” she asked. “You look bad.”

Theora couldn’t answer.

“It seems there was a Messenger among them,” Gonell said. Her voice sounded grave. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“A Messenger,” Theora repeated.

“Yeah.” Gonell clenched her fists. “Strongest type of Erratum. There’s like, only been three so far, excluding this one. They… don’t compare to anything. It must have blown itself up when you attacked?” She was trying to make sense of what had happened. “Some kind of advanced self-defence mechanism? Maybe it ran away through this rift it tore up?”

After a few moments, Dema also arrived, frowning. “Backfired?” she asked, looking at Theora.

“What do you mean, backfired?” Gonell’s eyes darted between them.

Then, they looked back up at the diagonal cut in the sky, this time a moment too long.

Wi—
A puls—
the ooze —
destroying e—
at it, the world fe—
ceased, and somethin—
emanating from the fringes.

It was a bizarre sight. Staring at it was breaking the story.

“Wha!” Dema recoiled.

Gonell squinted. “That feels really weird.”

“Don’t look at it,” Theora said.

A Messenger.

[Obliterate]’s recoil damage was proportional to the size of its target. Theora had means to manage that recoil if she correctly assessed the target’s size; abstract concepts or strong opponents were harder to deal with and posed a higher risk of her messing up the containment. But it required her to be aware of how much recoil she’d be dealing with. And thus, she realised what her mistake had been.

In her home world, there existed the concept of ‘auras’ — it was possible to sense the strength of Skills and opponents, and, with more experience, to detect hints of a presence being restrained or hidden as well. As such, Theora always intuitively knew the size of her targets, and was able to take precautions and determine whether using [Obliterate] was reasonable. It meant the chances of her damaging the fabric of reality when dealing killing blows were low — as it should be, because delivering a killing blow was bad enough.

But auras did not exist in this world of fiction.

When an Erratum appeared from the rift that was much stronger than the others, she hadn’t noticed. As such, she’d vastly underestimated its size. And blown up the world.

[Obliterate]’s damage was permanent. That wound stretching far across the sky would never heal. It was now an embodiment of death that would destroy whatever would come in contact with it.

That wound would never heal.

Every time this happened Theora told herself she’d learn from it, but apparently, it was impossible. She was doomed to bring havoc. A Roaming Blight.

She barely noticed how time rinsed by. Dema was explaining something to Gonell — maybe the intricacies of [Obliterate], as far as Dema understood them. Not that Theora had ever managed to relay the entirety of the horror of that Skill to anyone else. She didn’t even want to think about it. 

Was the damage contained in this story? Had some of it escaped into her home world? Broken the Grand Observatory of Fiction? After all, the pages were leaking out. 

They came to some kind of understanding, apparently. Gonell proceeded to dispatch the few Errata that had come out of the rift in the meantime, and then used a device to close it. Then, she flew away. Dema tried to get Theora’s attention, but Theora could only stare, barely managing to muster coherent thoughts. Too preoccupied with sifting through the flashes of her past clumping up her mind’s eye.

She should have asked about the different types of Errata. She should have recognised the dangers that visiting a different reality with different rules might pose. She even noticed the absence of auras before, but during the last thousands of years, her use of [Obliterate] had become an unconscious process, linking the presence she felt intuitively to the recoil she’d have to manage, and while, of course, she’d been aware that using it always posed risk no matter what, she’d failed to make the connection that the absence of feeling auras would render her usage of the Skill extremely dangerous.

She should not have made a game out of this.

So what if moving was tiring? She was in a different reality, she should have tried to beat them up by hand, or using her sword. Yes, it would have likely meant she’d have failed the challenge posed by Gonell, and moving that much would have made her tired for a week, but this backfiring of her Skill would take months to recover from, physically.

Not that that part mattered. Her limbs were heavy, some pressure weighed on her head. Parts of her mind were shutting down. But she refused to engage with it, because ultimately, the real price was not paid by her.

Dema snapped in front of her, and Theora tried to focus. The world was a bit blurry. 

“Hey! Wake up!” she said. “Gonell’s gonna fetch Lostina, and she’ll get you to a safe place so you can calm down. You look like you’re about to pass out. Gonell and I are gonna try to fix this up a bit.” She gestured at the sky.

“Fix it up?”

“Yeah! Like, can’t be healed, I know, I know. We’ll just — cover it up! Looks dangerous and all, so we’ll make it so nobody accidentally ends up inside, not even birds. And so nobody can look at it and have the sentences of the story fall out all jumbled-up.”

Theora failed to process these words; they did not make sense to her. Cover it up how? 

“I’ll help,” she murmured. She wouldn’t let her friends exert themselves at her fault after her arrogance had led to this disaster in the first place.

“I think you’ve done enough,” Theora heard Dema say as an echo in her mind. “Best you go and reflect on what a wretched creature you are.”

“You gotta rest!” was what Dema actually said instead, but it didn’t sound as easy-going as usual. There was no smile on her face; just concerned urgency as she looked down. Theora noticed that, by now, somehow, she wasn’t standing anymore, but had sunken into the grass. Had she chosen to do that and forgotten, or had her legs just given out?

She’d beaten a Messenger. If Messengers were the strongest entities in this world, then it was akin to her beating a creature much stronger than the Devil of Truth. It was akin to her beating the creature in the Cnidarian Tower, maybe. Except for those, she’d come prepared. She’d known how strong the Devil of Truth would be inside its own Domain, had acted with poise, and observed his movements, had made sure there was no way for him to escape. 

Here? She’d destroyed a creature of massive proportions without even noticing, and now, it was taking its toll. Like a snake, she’d swallowed something a little too big. Should have cut it up first. The remnants of her toil were oozing out from the cracks of her empty shell. It was hard enough to keep herself together already, being made of countless pieces and no glue except her will, but now, she really just wanted to sleep.

She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, there was Gonell.

“You look so done,” she said. “No wonder. It would decommission me for months too. You need to rest.”

Lostina, who stood next to Gonell, gave a concerned frown and Theora’s vision frizzled.

 

The next time Theora gained a sliver of consciousness, she was lying on something soft, gently rocking up and down. After pulling herself up, she realised she was on the back of Skulduggery. Fiantanne was walking next to Skuld’s head, the two immersed in some kind of discussion.

In the distance was the gash in the sky, now partly covered by a large crimson crystalline structure. A few memories flooded back in.

“Gonna wrap it in condensed blood,” Dema had said. “Lasts longer than rock.”

It wouldn’t last as long as an eternal wound, though.

“Why, I’ll just come back every thousand years for maintenance! Easy!”

Had Theora said that out loud?

“Oh!” Fia shouted up in the present. “Hey there! Slept well?”

Theora tried to find an answer to the question but couldn’t. She stared at her hand, a bit red from where she’d rested her cheek. It looked just the way it was supposed to. And yet, she couldn’t help but wonder if it was about to crumble to dust. Then, she felt herself slide down Skuld’s back, and somehow, Fia splashed a few drops of liquid at Theora’s direction in time to break the fall.

 

Dema staggered onto the clearing. It was a cool night. Sweat pearls lingered on her skin.

Theora was leaning against Skulduggery, who was asleep, body gently rising and falling with her slow breaths.

Lostina came to Dema’s aid, and helped her walk, and yet, Dema still bumped against a tree, and stumbled over a root, and panted. Her complexion was dull, and her amber eyes glinted too faintly in the dark.

“Take it easy,” Lostina said. “You lost like, what? A billion litres of blood?”

“Gotta regenerate,” Dema murmured, an exhausted smile on her lips. “Be as good as new in…” She looked up at the sky. “A few months? Yeah!”

“Did you complete it?” Fia asked, curled up into a thick blanket next to Skulduggery’s head, but awoken by the arrivals.

“Still gonna take a few more days, but almost!” Dema said and smiled. Finally, Lostina guided her all the way over the short grass, and helped her plop down next to Theora.

Dema cuddled up. Head against shoulder, hugging Theora’s arm. Smell of coal and ash. Later, she slid down, and fell asleep on Theora’s lap.

 

“I think I’m in trouble,” Lostina said one day, looking somewhat embarrassed.

“Why?” Theora managed to get out.

They sat in a cosy room, drinking tea that Theora didn’t remember making. Fancy chairs, a rug with an elaborate painting of a valley embroidered on it, detailed buildings of a small town in the foreground. The curtains at the small windows had a small green, tinting everything in the colours of a pond suffused with algae.

Theora blinked as she gazed outside. Was it spring? It looked like spring. Had she slept through winter?

Lostina bit her lip, apparently having some trouble getting it out.

“Is it about Gonell?” Theora asked. “You two have been talking a lot lately.” At least, that’s what Theora believed to remember.

At that, Lostina sighed. “Yeah, wow. Can’t hide anything from you, huh?”

“You can hide things, if you want to. What were you going to say?”

Lostina leaned back, and shook her head. “Sorry to bother you with this while you are recovering. I know Dema would just tease me, and there’s nobody else I can be open with…” Then, she grazed through her hair, and ended up covering half her face with its black strands. “I guess I’ll make it short. I’m kind of falling for her, for real.”

Theora wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. “I thought that was… I thought that was why you were doing all this in the first place.”

“Hey,” Lostina gently protested. “I told you it wasn’t like that. Yeah, I’m obsessed with her, but not… I had… reasons. But those don’t factor into this at all.”

“They don’t?”

Lostina drew out one of her strands. “I mean, obviously. She’s completely different to how I expected her to be. She only appeared in a few scenes of Procrastinating the Apocalypse, and was mostly just talked about otherwise. And then, me and other fans expanded it to god knows what, collected every detail, and made our own version, so to speak. But, even the original scraps we got from the author were filtered by the role they wanted her to play.”

Theora hummed. That sounded vaguely familiar. Theora had only known about Dena through myths and legends and secondary accounts, until she actually met her. And then, Dema was nothing like she’d expected.

“I mean,” Lostina continued, “I liked her character because — what, I happen to like strong women. Not a crime. And, they are rare enough in fiction. Plus… Her vibe… There’s the fact that she was implied to be into women, for one, but also… Tall, deep voice, some details she mentioned about how much she’s ‘changed from her past’… Did you know she picked her own name? Obviously I don’t know what the author intended, and it’s never been confirmed, we were definitely reading into it — uh. Frankly, it’s weird to talk about it at all, now that I know her in real life but…”

She halted for a moment, realising she’d talked herself into an awkward corner. “Sorry. Just trying to express why I found her relatable, in the story. And when she was killed off, like the characters I relate to always are, it crushed me, because it reminded me that in my world, people like us are not meant to exist. Not really. And now I’m here and I get a shot at fixing this one thing — to make it right, for what it’s worth. I want to give it my all.”

DespairLit really was depressing. And now, they had made it all real, and Theora felt like she couldn’t possibly dispense enough hugs to everyone to make up for it. Not that her own world was necessarily better — Dema probably felt the same way.

“I’m glad you exist,” Theora said and was about to choke up. She wanted Lostina to be happy so bad.

Lostina gave a weak shrug.

“Anyway… now it’s… She’s not a symbol, she’s a… friend. A lot of what I thought I knew about her turned out to be wrong. For example, she doesn’t actually run the asylum. She’s affiliated with it, but it’s a really cool decentralised—” She stopped, rolling eyes at herself. “Whatever. Not important right now. I guess I’m sad, because… We only have a few days left together, until…” She shook her head. “Time is running out.”

Theora startled. Only a few more days. Had she almost missed Gonell’s death? Then, she was hit by a wave of dizziness and fatigue.

“Do you…” She closed her eyes for a moment to push away the cloud in her head. “Have all you need?”

“Yep!” Lostina smiled, although it faded into melancholy. “Well, almost. The only thing that’s missing is my Ultimate Skill.”

“Your Ultimate Skill.” Theora tried to remember that conversation at Lostina’s work shelter a few months ago, when they had first talked about the plan. “You said it will give you combat prowess, and information.”

“Yeah. All my Class can really do is deceive people. Which can be effective depending on my goals, but it’s also risky. The Ultimate Skill helps with that. Obviously, it comes with constraints, but for a short amount of time, I could be the strongest person in the world. And I will use that to get it all done.”

“But you don’t have it yet.”

Lostina huffed out air. “Yeah. The experience curve had a sudden spike at the higher Levels, so my calculations were a bit off.”

Theora nodded. Her throat felt dry. She reached for her tea and her fingers were shaking a little as she sipped. “Will you — make it in time?”

“It depends,” Lostina let out, shrugging. “I can only get experience by lying. I get more if the target trusts me, and if I haven’t lied to them before. I also get a lot of experience for lies that are particularly cruel, or heinous. So, if I were to lie to someone I’ve only ever been honest with, and do so in a way that’s… A betrayal, then… Yeah. I might still get my Ultimate Skill in time. Obviously, the person would also need to believe me.”

Theora nodded, and rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t sleep now. She needed to be awake for the days to come. Lostina shouldn’t have to be alone for this. She’d already told Gonell a heinous lie before, and wasn’t honest to her particularly often, but from the way Theora remembered them interacting… Maybe Lostina could still tell Gonell another big lie to reach the Skill. If the two were close enough by now, although Theora wasn’t really sure about Gonell’s perspective on this. In the original story, Lostina had spent a lot of time with Fiantanne too, so…

Lostina’s plan could definitely involve some kind of last-minute betrayal.

Whatever her plan actually was.

“So, even now, are you still not going to tell me what you’ll do?”

Lostina winced, and looked away.

“Still not?” Theora asked, again.

“Like I said back then. Kinda scared that if I tell you, you will try to stop me.”

Theora bit her lips. “I wouldn’t stop you, if you don’t want me to.”

“Maybe…” Lostina turned her cup of tea on the saucer. It was almost empty. “It’s unfair of me, I suppose. But my story, my rules.”

It hurt to hear that. “Should I be trying to stop you?”

“No.” The answer came firm and short. 

For a while, they kept silent. Nobody else was around; everyone was busy that day, and Lostina had agreed to stay behind to keep Theora company. At that, Theora remembered.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she said, and Lostina lifted her eyes. Theora got up and staggered to her travelling coat. Getting up made her feel nauseous, but she managed to finally find and pull out the coffer — or, Lodestone, as people called it.

Lostina snorted. “You have that? That’s hilarious.”

“I would like to know what’s inside.”

Her dark eyes stared at the item for a few moments, surprised but also a little incredulous, although ultimately, not taking the situation very seriously. “Well, I can’t tell you. Don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter. Just — don’t open it.”

Theora almost found it in herself to pout. What a mean answer. She stashed it away again, and returned to her chair, exhaling softly as it creaked under her weight.

Lostina looked concerned. “You can lie down if you need to.”

“It’s alright,” Theora said. “It’s hard to focus, but I should be fine.”

“That’s good. To be a little selfish — I wasn’t sure if I could ask you, since you were feeling so bad these months, but…”

“Feel free.”

Lostina chewed on her lip for a moment. “While I can’t tell you what I’m going to do, I’ll still need your help, to some extent. If that’s alright. So, if you’ll be up for that, it would make me happy.”

“Your aim is to prevent Gonell’s death,” Theora said, but didn’t make it sound like a question.

“Yes.”

“Then I will help you.”

Lostina smiled. “Thank you. I’ll tell you when it’s time. Oh, also, I have a request.”

“Yes?”

“What stops us from telling Gonell the truth is the outline. But, one day, the outline won’t be in effect anymore. A few years from now. When the story is over.”

Theora nodded.

“By then, the restrictions will hopefully be gone.” Lostina took a deep breath, bracing herself. “Once that’s the case, could you do me a favour and tell Gonell the truth? About what we did in the village, at least. I don’t want her to live her entire life thinking she killed them. You don’t have to stay here until then, but if you could… revisit this world, once it’s all over, and tell her that. That would give me peace.”

Theora shifted around, a little confused. Her hands clenched her night-gown. “Of course I can tell her. But wouldn’t it be better if she heard it from you?”

Lostina stared for a moment, mouth half-open. Then, she smiled, tapping the top of her head. “Right. Silly me, that’s true. I can just tell her myself.”

These words caused a wave of relief. Theora gave a nod, and relaxed into the chair.

A moment later, Lostina’s gaze went idle, and she blinked.

Theora looked up. “Everything alright?”

“Yes,” Lostina murmured, eyes still unfocused. She sighed a deep sigh, then combed her fingers through her hair, the tension in her body letting off. “Thank you. All set now.”