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Chapter 172: The One Who Told Her to Come Home
🕑 Added 2024-09-12 18:36:49 +0000 UTCCN: Death
A little cut in the world remained behind Theora as she emerged back from the Miasma.
She was fairly certain she’d returned not too far away from Dema’s house, but the journey had still messed with her head quite a lot.
She did a massive stretch. Her body was lighter now. Her bones didn’t crack like she’d gotten used to in ‘Reality’ — instead her motions were fluid and light. Moving around had always been effort, even before ‘Reality’, but only now did she notice the stark difference. That other world had been trying very hard to constrain her, she felt almost bad for not even noticing. Like tight ropes lifted after years of wearing them; she’d gotten too accustomed to feel the constraints they’d imposed.
While she failed to elicit any reaction from her muscles and joints through her stretches, her brain threatened to flood with all the memories the other world had been helping her suppress. She caught herself. The memories had to wait. Before she could indulge, she had to find a suitable place to regurgitate Dema — and unfortunately the place she’d arrived at wasn’t it. A temperate forest with difficult, uneven terrain. The distant rush of a river resounded under the chirps of two nightingales.
She couldn’t dump the ruins of a burning building here; there wasn’t enough space. She also didn’t quite want Dema to emerge right here, not knowing how far exactly she was from Dema’s house. It should have been here somewhere; that was the place she’d aimed for while traversing the Miasma, but it wasn’t exactly a precise science.
She eyed the little crack in the world for a while; thin and transparent, etching the place into her memory. It didn’t look dangerous, but perhaps she could ask Bell to seal it in a barrier later anyway. Or maybe an actual [Sealer].
For now, though, she had to find a spot to reunite with Dema.
Maybe a meadow would work?
A meadow, or perhaps the top of a rocky outcrop. But which direction was home? The party UI was empty. Maybe it had disbanded? Either way, there was no helpful marker on a helpful map helpfully pointing out the location of her friends and family.
Theora let out a little sigh. The proper way to deal with this would be to find her family first and ask them for help. If only to even just let them know she and Dema were back. But that could take hours. Days. Theora felt like she had gotten her first birthday present in thousands of years and really wanted to open it right now. And this wasn’t just any present, this was Dema.
Some forests had meadows, right? They might border grasslands. Judging from the terrain, this seemed to be a mountainous region too — there was a steep incline to the north. Follow the incline? Or follow the river into the valley?
Theora clenched her fist, straining what she was holding inside. How could finding a spot to dump a house be that difficult? Theora just wanted Dema back, not deal with such a mundane task after so much crying. And traversing the Miasma between worlds. That too.
Theora took a deep breath. This was maybe a little stressful.
Clenching what was still in her right fist, she dove her left hand into her attire in hopes of finding something in there that would magically solve her situation. Dema’s scrolls, and an old deck of cards. No luck… She stuffed everything back in and picked a random direction — neither up nor down, but sideways — and marched on.
While pacing over rocks and tree stumps and through brushes, she managed to calm down a little. She shouldn’t really trust herself too much right now. Making tea with her Skill would require a break, which would calm her down a little more, but delay meeting Dema.
It would be nice if she had someone to talk to who could help her figure this out. Perhaps she’d underestimated the task a little; it wasn’t quite mundane to find a solid foundation for a building, not even if that building was made of ruins. She really wasn’t made for any of that.
She jumped across a few boulders and hit upon a side branch of that river floating nearby. Blue cleaved the canopies above, made sparse by the waterbed.
She looked upwards. She did have someone to talk to.
“I’m back,” she whispered at the sliver of blue parting the leaves. “Miss me?”
The clouds stayed silent. Fair enough.
Theora continued: “Could you help me out? I’m left to my own devices, and those devices are…”
You only ever talk to me when you need something, [Head in the Clouds] pouted in a voice only Theora could hear.
Theora was almost sure her head was messing with her. “We both know you can reach out to me more or less whenever you want,” Theora bantered.
A sigh. Then, her head replied, Have you tried sensing auras? If you focus a little you should be able to figure out where your friends are, or at least, the nearest settlement. You could jump high too and look around, maybe a suitable spot is already in sight. Also, sure, your party was disbanded, but you should still have your alliance chat with your family in it. You won’t see their location, but you can send messages.
Wow. If Theora had ever thought anything bad about her [Head in the Clouds], she took it all back. That Skill was a total genius. “Thank you. You’re a treasure.”
She heard a scoff while launching herself into the air. While ascending, she fumbled to figure out how to open the alliance chat; no luck so far. At the peak of her jump, she took a wide look all around.
She spotted three places that might work for her purpose. She spotted Dema’s house, although it looked a bit rundown. She also spotted what she suspected must be Treeka, right next to the house — in fact, it looked more like Treeka was inside the house, towering over it. And behind her was the village and the cliffside Theora’d been at with Bell. The vegetation had changed a lot. The world seemed almost lusher now.
The Rains of Fire had apparently ended. Not a big surprise, they rarely lasted more than a few months or years. And now, the ground was suffused with mana again. A lot of these plants might in fact be sprouting with ambient magic. Perhaps she could make use of that for [Flower Language]?
She was slowly falling down again, but still hadn’t figured out how to open the alliance chat. There were just too many sub-menus and tabs and prompts. Oh, there were so many prompts. The System had apparently missed her a lot.
Well, communication had to wait, then. For now, Theora set off toward the top of a hill she’d spotted close to home. It was overgrown with flowers and should offer enough space. It would perhaps be a nice spot for Dema to regain consciousness too, all things considered.
She was almost running. Each step definitely felt a lot lighter. And while anxiety still ravaged her chest, she dared to be fairly optimistic. Soon, she’d see Dema again. Soon, she’d see Isobel again. Bell too.
That thought made her blink. It was the second time she’d thought of Bell since returning, but something felt off. That’s right — she hadn’t heard anything from Bell. Theora and Treeka had never interacted much, apart from those two weeks when they first met, so it made sense that Treeka wouldn’t ask Iso to deliver a message. But Bell? Theora imagined Bell might have had something to say. She usually did.
She must have been very busy.
Theora took a moment to feel the presences in her surroundings, just to make sure. There was Treeka, stronger than ever, very easy to find. Theora’s heart skipped a happy beat when she felt Isobel there too. She must have gotten a bit stronger in the meantime. Theora recognised nobody else around, though. Bell was one of the strongest heroes in the world; she might have fallen behind a bit, but her aura shouldn’t have gotten weaker. Seemed like she wasn’t anywhere close to home.
That was… well, as Dema would put it, a ‘bummer’. Bell had been the one to tell Theora to come home in the first place. Perhaps it was a bit more than a mere bummer, actually. Why wasn’t Bell here?
Theora soon closed in on the flowery hill only a few hundred steps away from home. Looking at it up-close, it seemed like a good place. She spent about ten minutes nervously trampling over the meadow and looking out for critters to shoo them away, to make sure they’d retreat from the area before she dumped the ruins.
Eventually, she knew of no more mice traipsing between the flowers. There was a rabbit burrow here, but she had enough space to put the house well next to it, out of reach of any possible debris. She listened closely for a while but heard no more animals crawling under or across the soil, her hand on the ground carried no vibrations betraying another little presence. The sky was clear, and she waited until no bird was above her.
Theora took a deep breath. [Retain] wasn’t a storage space for items she wished to carry around. It was a way to preserve the important. She’d intuitively known this, but now for the first time thought of actually looking at its description.
[Retain], Level 418.
What you retain will remain.
This Skill was meant to keep things, not to store them for later use. Of course she wanted to keep Dema, which may be the only reason the Skill had not combusted all around her, but still. She just needed to get Dema out of it, and then be kind to the Skill from now on.
She took a moment to envision the ruins in front of her. Of course, if the Shade was here, she could ask it to do it inside, which would likely be the safest option. But the Shade was frozen in time too.
Theora was about to hurl out Dema. She really was. If only she’d received another fraction of a second, it would have happened.
But then she felt a little presence behind her. Walking up the hill. Closing in.
She turned to look. A person. She had a large, mushroom-like head, tentacles on her sides, and looked like a Medusa. Theora frowned. She hadn’t seen any Medusae other than Bell in centuries. Especially not children.
Spotting Theora, the little girl rushed up the hill. She came to a halt, glaring up.
“It’s you, huh?” she asked, tendrils coiling angrily. “You’re Theora.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” Theora admitted. She still silently thanked her anxiety and hesitation for not accidentally dumping a building with a dead Demon right in front of the eyes of a child.
A child that now scoffed at her. “Of course you would be. You always are.”
Theora blinked. “I am?”
The girl chewed her tongue. “That’s how you caused her all that trouble, isn’t it?”
Theora felt a little baffled at those words. And at the girl’s appearance, now that she could look at her up-close. Blue skin. A white dress that looked to be part of her body. Orange tentacles and eyes, with light yellow markings on her skin. She looked like she was thirteen, or fourteen.
Theora stared in awe. “Does Bell have a—” She frowned. “Are you Bell’s daughter?”
“No,” she snapped. “Hate to break it to you, but Bell died.”
Theora’s blood froze. “What?”
“Duh? Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. Put one and one together already. Oh wait, you’re too busy running away, leaving people to fend for themselves yet again.”
Bell died?
Theora was barely able to parse these words. How was that possible? It wasn’t, right? Iso would have said something. Iso would have called Theora back. Her messages would not have been so polite and cheerful when first reaching out.
Theora felt something wet on her cheeks and touched them. Tears had spilled out. Her face was numb.
The girl continued undeterred, turned to gaze down at the nearest settlement. “And everyone keeps saying it was her decision to keep damaging her Self like that — but she had to because otherwise, people might have died or gotten hurt!” She looked back at Theora. “She was pressured into it. Not just—”
The girl interrupted herself and sighed deeply. “Actually, nevermind. Not like you’d ever care. And the most depressing part of it is that once my brain matures and regains access to old memories, I probably won’t even be mad at you anymore. Because I know she wasn’t. Goddamn pushover.”
Oh. The mannerisms. The twitching of her tendrils with each sentence. The way she sharpened her words with truth and inflicted them with no remorse. This wasn’t Bell’s daughter. This was Bell.
She must have polyped again. Theora had never seen that happen before; she hadn’t known it would render Bell back into a literal child. Though, it made sense — before Theora left, Bell had mentioned she didn’t remember the years after she polyped. Of course she didn’t, if she was a baby first.
A wave of hesitant relief washed through Theora. Bell was gravely injured, but not quite dead. The cold sweat running down Theora’s back was still a fierce reminder that she had to start taking better care of Bell — whose little ‘descendent’, so to speak, looked badly in need of a hug right now. But she didn’t give off the impression that Theora was currently the right person to help with that.
For what it was worth — if it had come to Bell polyping yet again, Theora had to agree with little Bell’s misgivings. It was nice to see someone defend her like that. Even if it was, to some degree, Bell herself. But at the same time, the girl sounded very frustrated. That frustration must have been coming from somewhere, right…?
Theora asked: “Have people not been taking you seriously, when you spoke of these things?”
That stumped Bell, a little. She took an involuntary step back, her leg squishing against the ground. Her tentacles retreated a bit further away from Theora. Eventually, mumbling more at the ground than anyone, she said: “Even when they claim they ‘agree’, they say I shouldn’t be so ‘brash’ about it.” She paused for a moment, maybe deliberating if she should say more. She did. “I was told to stop with the self-pity.” She looked up at Theora defensively. “But it’s not self-pity! I’ll morph together with her over time, sure. But right now, I’m not her! What I’m doing is not self-pity!”
That poor soul. Theora nodded. “It is difficult to remain calm when everything around you is wrong. An unfair demand to make of you.”
She opened her mouth in protest, but didn’t seem to find words. Then, she spat: “You—”
“Bell?” The voice came from downhill. “Who are you arguing with now?” Shortly after, Iso poked her head up, and beamed at Theora. “You’re back!”
Bell recoiled when she saw her, and immediately lowered her tendrils and tilted her jellyfish head forward to hide her eyes. She seemed… shy? Shy towards Iso.
“I need to get Dema out,” Theora said. She glanced at Bell. “It won’t be pretty.”
“Oh.” Iso shuffled the legs at the side of her body against each other. “Is that why she stopped responding?”
“Yes.”
Isobel’s facial expression melted, and she pushed herself up the hill to give Theora a tight hug. “I’m so sorry.”
Theora hadn’t realised how much she’d needed that one. Her arms wrapped around Iso’s carapace as the warm slate and shale parts clicked and shifted against her chest, cushioned by warm moss.
Isobel’s head shifted against Theora’s shoulder. “You have her in your attire?”
“Retained.”
Bell had come further up the hill, looking unsettled and confused.
“Dema died…?” Her voice was very restrained.
Isobel let go and turned to Bell; they were already almost the same height. “Let’s give her a moment to fix that. Will you help me fetch what we prepared for them?”
Bell nodded, and wrapped her hand around Isobel’s. They paced down the hill, but Bell kept staring up at Theora even as they went. After a few steps, eyes wide and shaken, she mumbled an apology.
Theora would need to make clear later that she wasn’t upset with her.
When the two had gotten out of eyesight and earshot, she turned back towards the meadow. Her hand was still clasping that thing, almost a source of comfort. She kept forgetting she had it, but it wasn’t time to look at it yet.
Instead, Theora shooed away a curious lizard that she’d noticed making its way onto the meadow during her conversation with Bell.
Extending her free hand, imagining the precise orientation she wanted the ruins to appear in, Theora gazed calmly over the flowerbeds.
Then she let Dema out.
Comments
Lucy Severine
That was quite sweet. Also, that's the second time that deck of cards has appeared. Don't think I don't notice!
Pink
Oh the cliffhanger ahh hope dema is ok
