Of all the things I had expected to find, this hadn't been one of them. In hindsight, it really should have been. How could you save the world without defeating a demon king or two along the way? I shouldn't have been so surprised to see that it was another otherworlder either. It wasn't an uncommon trope for the big bad guy to turn out to be a fallen hero, to act as a foil to the main character and show them what they could have become without the power of friendship. The final message to both the main character and the audience behind the screen, to really drive the lesson home.

But I had already learned my lesson, and there was no audience that I would be teaching it to. I had already defeated my demons. This was supposed to be an epilogue, not the climax of my story.

I stared up at the man floating in front of me. Rather than a big hulking figure, clad in jet black armor and a horned helmet that covered his face entirely, he was completely naked, hairless, and thin enough that I almost wanted to call him emaciated. His eyes were half-closed and unfocused, like he had just woken up from a long nap and he stared at me with a confused look in his eyes though I wasn't sure if he was just as confused by the revelation that I was another otherworlder, or if he just had no idea what was going on.

He spoke again, this time, his voice held a little more emotion in it, a little more confusion, but I still didn't know what he was saying. His voice was still soft, but the language sounded harsh and, most importantly, foreign. I didn't know if he was speaking some language from my world that I just couldn't recognize, or if he was an Otherworlder pulled from an entirely different dimension, but in any case, I assumed that no magic that I could cast would let me understand him.

"I'm sorry for bringing you here, Lena," I said, while still staring the man in the eyes. His eyes started to register me, and I didn't want to risk losing his focus. "But I need your help. Can you tell me what he's saying?"

Lena didn't say anything immediately, but I didn't have the time to let her process what was going on. Still keeping my eyes on the Otherworlder, I reached out behind me and gently grabbed Lena's hand. I almost flinched away when I felt how badly she was shaking, but I kept my hand firm, trying to give her a sense of confidence that I didn't quite have myself.

"Lena," I said, as gently as possible, despite the anxiety that crept into my heart. "I can't understand what he's saying, and I don't think he can understand me. I need your help."

Lena still didn't respond immediately, but I felt her squeeze my hand back in what might have felt like a death grip to normal human being. I could hear her quick breaths evening out slowly, not to a level where I could convince myself that she was calm, but at least that she was calming down.

"He's asking who you are," she said, quietly.

The man's head turned quickly towards her at the sound of her voice, and I could feel her flinching under his gaze, but I squeezed her hand gently and stepped in front of her to hide her from view.

"Could you tell him that my name is Jamie, and I'm an otherworlder, just like him?"

She repeated my message, and the man narrowed his eyes. I still couldn't tell whether he was skeptical of my claim, or if he was still generally confused about what was going on.

"What's your name?" I asked, with Lena repeating my words.

The man frowned at the question, and a complex series of emotions passed through his expression, before he said a single word.

"David," Lena said.

I nodded, even if I didn't agree with her. Through whatever translation magic that was filtering my understanding of what Lena was saying, the name David was close to what the man had said, but not quite the same. Still, I wasn't confident in my ability to repeat what the man had said, with the same pronunciation, and I had no time to waste on trying.

"David," I said. "What is your dream?"

I felt Lena flinch at my question, and she hesitated in repeating it. I squeezed her hand again, trying to reassure her, even if I had no idea how. Thankfully, it seemed to be enough.

"What is your dream?" Lena asked.

David's eyes widened almost imperceptibly, as another flash of emotion passed over his features.

He opened his mouth and closed it immediately, as if biting his words back. I could see his eyes threatening to dart to the side, as he struggled to maintain direct eye contact. When he spoke, I wasn't sure if he was speaking with a stutter, or if it was just what his language sounded like.

"He said his dream is to guide the lost souls to paradise," Lena said.

I tried to keep my expression as neutral as possible, to hide the confusion I felt. Not knowing how to respond, I simply stared at him, my mind whirring as I tried to figure out what would be the best thing to say here.

Before I could figure out something to say, David tore his eyes away from mine, looking down to the side, an expression of shame written clearly on his face. He muttered something under his breath that I doubted I would've been able to hear properly, even if he was speaking plain english.

"He's asking you if you're here to replace him," Lena said. "He wants to know if he's failed in his duties."

David flinched as Lena repeated his message, but kept his eyes glued to the floor beside him, with his mouth in a tight line of focus. His fists were clenched by his sides, in tight balls of frustration, and I couldn't be certain if he was angry or if he was afraid. Even though I didn't know what he was talking about, I felt like I could somehow relate to him.

But I stopped myself before I could sympathize with him too much. Regardless of who David was, he was the source of this world's problems.

"Lena," I said. "David needs to die."

I turned around to face her, and immediately felt a surge of guilt. She had her mouth half open, as if she had planned to repeat what I had just said, before she realized that it would be an incredibly bad idea. Her face was stained with tears, and a deep sense of weariness seemed to emanate from every aspect of her being, from her sunken posture, to her pale skin, to the glassy eyed look she gave back to me, too tired to display any emotion on her face.

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I let go of her hand to place my palm over her head.

"Restore," I said. I don't know if 'restore' was the right word to describe how I wanted to help Lena, but my magic seemed to know what I wanted better than I did. A flash of green light burst from my hands and entered Lena's body, and once the glow faded away, it revealed a much healthier looking Lena, though the weariness remained in her expression.

I glanced back at David, but he had barely reacted to the magic. I wasn't sure if he even noticed that I turned my attention away from him.

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this, Lena," I said. "I thought my magic would be enough to fix any problems we ran into in a couple of seconds, but I didn't expect this. I'm sorry."

Lena stared into my eyes, and though she didn't say anything, I could see that she believed me. She stared into my soul with a piercing genuineness that made me want to look away in shame of what I was about to ask of her.

"We need him to die," I said. "But I don't think I can do it."

Lena's eyes widened and her mouth opened to protest what I was about to say, but she clamped it shut when she realized that David would be able to understand anything she said.

Even if I was certain that she knew what I wanted from her, and that I didn't actually need to say anything else, but I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't voice my request out loud. I needed to take responsibility for what I was about to ask of her.

"Lena," I said. "I'm not asking you this because I don't want to do it myself. I just don't think I can. I'm not nearly smart enough to figure out what he wants, and I'm not kind enough to give it to him if I did. But you're the smartest and kindest person I know. Can you fulfill his dream?"

A complex stream of emotion ran across Lena's face, and I was ashamed of both how scared she was of my request and how relieved I felt when I saw that none of that fear was directed towards me. I meant it when I said that she was the smartest person I knew, and I knew that she had already figured out that I was only asking her because it was my only option. From the anxiety that ran across her face in waves, I could only assume that she didn't believe in herself as much as I did.

I squeezed her hand gently.

"I know you can do it," I said.

She looked up and met my eyes. I don't know exactly what she saw in them, if she could tell that I was being completely sincere. She frowned at me, and I could see her gritting her teeth in frustration before she nodded, the motion so slight that it was barely perceptible.

She wasn't confident in herself, I knew that much. Her hand shook violently in mine as she spoke to David, but her words were steady, any hints of nervousness filtered through the mask of confidence that she had put on.

As she talked, her demeanor filled me with a sense of melancholic nostalgia, as I thought back on how she treated me when we had first met. She treated David with respect and dignity, without letting on the fact that she regarded him as a volatile monster, that had poisoned her world with his presence. A dull pang of pain pounded against my heart, as I acknowledged how familiar her lies felt.

Lena was an excellent liar.

Even though I was no longer a part of their conversation, she continued to relay each of David's messages to me and she would wait for me to say something before responding to him, to keep up the facade that I was still telling her what to say.

At first, I didn't know what to say, and being put on the spot, I rambled out one of my old poems from memory. Lena rolled with it, ignoring the edgy poems that were permanently engraved into my brain since I had conceived them when I was thirteen, and continued to talk with David as my liaison. I continued this for a few more responses, until I ran out of poems, and instead of rambling from memory, I just rambled instead.

"I wonder if this place is modelled after the Garden of Eden? It looks kind of like how I would've imagined it. I wonder if David is from my world, or if there's another world with a similar myth. I can only assume he was the one to make this place look like how it does."

"I heard somewhere that if an extra in a movie needs to pretend like they're talking in the background of a scene, they just keep mouthing the word 'watermelon' over and over. I don't really know if it would work here, since I wouldn't want to risk David notice I'm just saying the same word over and over."

"Watermelon, kumquat, orange, kiwi, strawberry, blueberry, orange. Wow, sure didn't take me long to get a repeat."

I hoped I wasn't distracting Lena too much, but I didn't want to risk letting my conscious thoughts take over. So I continued to ramble, barely paying attention to what Lena and David were saying. The rising hope in David's expression was enough to tell me what I already knew, that Lena was fulfilling his dream, or at least she was making him think she was. And wasn't that enough?

Apparently it was. Whether David had been fully fooled by Lena's lies, or if he had to lie to himself to fill in the blanks, I could see a sense of peace wash over him as he accepted his fate. I don't know whether he was fully satisfied by the life he lead here, or if he still had some regrets, but as a sense of tension escaped his body, escaping him in waves, I could tell that above all else, he was glad to be given an ending, no matter how satisfying it was or wasn't.

"What will you do now?" Lena asked him.

David said something, and before Lena could translate for me, he looked down into the hole I had made in the center of the hill and slowly descended into it.

"He said he's going to sleep," Lena said, once he had completely disappeared, confirming what I had already assumed.

"I'm not surprised," I said. "He looked pretty tired."

"Yeah," Lena said, before her legs gave away.

I caught her before she fell to the floor and let her down gently, but it seemed like the strength in her body had left her completely, to the point where I needed to support her upper body to even let her sit up. So I did. I sat down with her on the grassy hill that overlooked the paradise that we were in, with my arm around her shoulder and her head leaning on mine. We stayed like that for a long moment, the world around us as silent as we were, as time dripped painfully by.

"Do you think he's actually going to die?" Lena asked, breaking the silence abruptly, still with her head on my shoulder.

"Yeah," I said.

"So I killed a man today," she said.

"He was already dead, Lena," I said. "All you did was pushing him along on a journey he should've been on already. I'm sure he's grateful."

"And how would you know that?" Lena asked, bitterness saturating her every word, even though she didn't move from her spot on my shoulder. "How do you know that?"

My grip around her shoulder tightened for a second, before I forced myself to relax. I didn't say anything in response.

"Sorry," she said.

"No, I'm sorry," I said.

There was another long silence between us, but it was more tense than the one we'd had just a moment ago.

"You made him really happy, Lena," I said. Even if I hadn't been paying enough attention to know what she said, I was confident in that fact.

"It doesn't change the fact that I killed him," she replied.

"Everyone has to die some day," I said. "I'm sure he's grateful that he could go out on a good note."

"That's a horrible thing to say."

"Yeah. It is, isn't it?"

"How long do you think it'll take for him to die?"

"About five hours, maybe?"

"And how long do you have?"

"Just a little bit less than that."