Tara carefully considers the rewards that this strange spirit offers her. Although it would be disingenuous to say she carefully considered all of them as Tara promptly dismisses the last option, walking away, immediately.

For one, Tara isn’t one to back down, and secondly, she very much would like the two boons the person offered. Anyone with this much gravitas and a personal dimension to themselves is bound to be an extremely powerful spirit.

Presumably, some sort of spirit based around stories, since they seem to be overly concerned with them. And any type of magic based on influencing stories when applied to the world means that they must warp reality itself, which is quite powerful and thus useful in the journey back home.

Curious as to what exactly the person before her is, Tara scrys him and peeks past the thing layer on the outside. Only to immediately feel just a bit of regret as a spike of pure pain and power drives into her mind.

As she does not get a feeling of what type of spirit they are but instead the horrific pain of a dog with shining gold fur viciously tearing off her arm, the straight and sharp teeth turn her skin to strips and dig through her bones until they break through and take the whole arm. Tara can do naught but stare at the stump as she falls to the floor in pain. Yet despite that horrid pain, she can’t help but feel that she was the one who betrayed the dog, not the other way around.

Before it all suddenly comes to a stop and the strange spirit looms above Tara on the ground, that godforsaken smirk still taped onto his face, laughing, he says, “You should stop pondering the possibilities or the mysteries, little one, and make a choice, quickly at that.”

Gritting her teeth in pain, Tara begins to disparage herself for the foolishness of her actions. What was she thinking, trying to scry such a powerful spirit! But the disparagements never really pick up any steam, considering the fact that she can’t bring herself to regret learning more.

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What could that scene mean, and who was the d-

Interrupting her is the sound of impatient fingers tapping on the desk as the strange spirit says in a lilting musical tone, “I’m waiiiiiiting!”

Not wanting to mees any more with someone who was so clearly dangerous, Tara huried up in thinking of what she wanted and quickly reasoned that she would want to not regret something more than a tiny nudge towards success in getting home. After all she need all the tiny nudges she can get but in the end luck can't get her back home.

Quickly, Tara says, “I wish for a chance to solve a regret.”

The strange spirit satisfied smiles and makes a gesture as if he meant for his hands to clasp together, yet all that happens is that his hand grips his stump and squeezes the still bloody wound.

Grabbing a book from nowhere, he says with a brilliant smile. "Excellent. Now, with my authority, I will displace the one meant to arrive and replace them with you. The idiots are trying to eternally trap my heroes for cheap labor, and I won’t have it. You don’t have to destroy them, but frankly.”

A smirk rolling across his face as he closes the book in his hands, he says, “I know you, you wouldn’t let the fools you’ll meet run around once you see them.” As he does this, Tara sees the title of the book for the briefest moment and reads "Astral Escape" on its cover.

But she does not get any time to process this before he sighs and says with a quiet voice, “I dislike the fact that you aren’t one of mine, and I thus don’t get to keep you, but oh well, your ongoing story is the only thing that would allow you to come back, so I might as well use what tools are on hand.”

Finishing off, he says, “Either way, Toodloo,” as he waves Tara off with his stump.

Tara, unsure of how to react to all of this, begins to object and ask questions, but soon finds her foot caught in a tiny crack in reality and plummets into a new world.

Screaming in shock, the last thing she hears is that smug spirit giving her a gloomy final word with “Fair warning, you’re going to be neck deep in amnesia and religious nutjobs, so watch out for that, oh great Breaker of Chains.”

Tara begins to scream “WHAT!” but before she can finish, it all goes black.