The most impactful decision the council reached over the next few days was where to place the base quarters of the operation to save the planet.

Among the many proposals, three had crystallised as major contenders.

One was Hallmark, being one of the largest cities of the continent, and home to one of the most well-resourced artificer’s guilds to date. Another cited benefit was the Hallmark’s close relation to Theora, who would form the main component of any rescue operation.

The second main proposal was a southern mountain settlement, the hometown of Hareta, who was currently the most prolific [Diviner] alive. The university Hareta taught at would offer additional resources to support the endeavour.

The final proposal was Heofen. It was where the Ancient Devourer had been studied for centuries, and it was Theora’s place of birth.

In Theora’s mind, she would have been fine with any place at all, except for that last one, and so it felt fitting that Heofen ended up being chosen by the council. Fitting because that meant Theora would leave the world in the same place she entered it, and that made it feel even less likely that she’d ever return.

It would leave Theora so close to her training grounds, without ever actually reaching them and finding another Fragment of Time. It was also the opposite direction of where Treeka was still stuck. Theora was about to save the world and abandon everyone else.

Admittedly, there were plans to make up for it. Once Theora succeeded her mission, Bell and Iso would no longer be needed, and could immediately set off to meet Treeka, for example. But what if Theora failed? What if the world ended with Treeka still being alone? What if Time would remain fractured forever?

Meanwhile, citing the extraordinary circumstances, Isobel was able to convince the person arranging her Skill trade to send the potential partner to Heofen instead, so that they could all go there together. And so, they set off to Heofen.

With each step towards it, Theora’s feet grew a little heavier.

“Are you okay?” Bell asked one day, as their little boat was falling behind.

Theora didn’t answer, trying instead to keep going and catch up to the other two instead. The rows were difficult to move. They had to traverse this wide lake; people in a local settlement had shared their boats.

“I know going back… there,” Bell continued, carefully, “must be tough. I swear I tried my best to dissuade them.”

“It’s alright,” Theora said. “We were heading there regardless, remember? Impossible to put it off forever.”

Bell was grazing some tendrils over the water, causing gentle ripples and soft sloshing. “When we last talked about your hometown, you mentioned that your ‘fate’ had been sealed there. So… it’s about bad memories?”

Bell had been in a hero party together with Amyd of Heofen, the [Sealer] that had dedicated her life to banishing Theora. It was possible that Bell already knew everything. Or perhaps she’d never cared too much.

Theora pushed her hand into her hair, grabbing a large chunk of it, and pulled her legs closer. “I wonder what she’ll say.”

Bell frowned. She gently pushed Theora away from the middle seat, and took over rowing instead, using her tendrils as support in the water. They picked up speed immediately. “For what it’s worth,” she said, “Dema’s stubborn. I don’t think there’s anything she could find out about you that would make much of a difference.”

“I wonder,” Theora murmured.

“Well, it’s mutual, isn’t it?” Bell went, and Theora perked up. “I mean,” Bell continued, “we talked about it before. A few times. Even our first conversation was about this. That if it turned out that Dema was truly evil or whatever, that you’d still love her. Right? So why would it be different for Dema? I can’t imagine it would be. The two of you have that kind of bond. Doesn’t easily seem shaken.” She stared intensely as she said these words, and Theora already knew what was coming. What her last sentence had been leading up to. “She feels terrible, you know,” Bell added. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but you should sort that out.”

Theora winced. There it was.

Heofen was a place surrounded by wide hills of golden wheat. It was a reclusive place, so there was no wide road leading up to it. Instead, footpaths were trodden into the fields. They walked by crumbled thick stone walls that poked out from the glowing yellow like icebergs.

Theora’s hometown was truly old. So old that she didn’t even recognise those ruins. Perhaps they belonged to buildings she once knew, or maybe they didn’t. She sure couldn’t remember the current layout — except for the fields of wheat. Those were eternal, and they had made it through prior calamities like nothing else would.

An ice age could drag mountainous glaciers through the northern regions of the continent, or a meteorite or supervolcano might cause a few decades of darkness. Sometimes, cyclic magical calamities befell the lands, but the wheat would always regrow, it seemed, even after Rains of Fire.

Or, for all Theora knew, the wheat could have been there when she was young, and only regrown this year. She didn’t recognise the place, and none of the stalks of wheat she was grazing over with her fingertips as they passed through were the same as any she’d touched as a child. They only looked the same.

Or rather, she was just not able to make out the difference. Like faces of people, poof, gone. Theora’s gaze jerked up to Dema’s back. Her ragged cloak and makeshift wine-coloured scarf of torn-off fabric were dancing in the wind, her steps pushing the wheat apart with soft rustling. She was talking to Isobel, up ahead, laughing.

Their eyes suddenly met when Dema threw back one of her occasional glances to make sure Theora was alright and still with them.

Dema never stopped making sure.

Her lips curled up in a warm smile, then her gaze returned to Isobel, and she went back to being confused about whatever the two were talking about.

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They hadn’t really talked. They hadn’t touched at all. Theora didn’t know how anymore, it was all too much. And yet, Dema managed to still make her feel welcome, make her feel like things would be alright, just with little gazes like these.

Bell had called it a bond, and it made sense. In many different ways. It just wasn’t always clear to Theora if that bond was a lifeline or a leash. Not that she’d particularly mind being leashed by Dema; but more sinisterly, Theora wanted to leave this world alone, ridding it of the eternal blemish that was herself.

As they moved down a slope, one of the first buildings came into view. It wasn’t a residential one; Theora guessed it was a library. Light-grey stone in imposing, time-defying architecture, several complexes of different sizes leaning against each other, the flat roofs home to plants and trees.

They didn’t have anywhere to go specifically; Theora had to announce her presence, although the others had already offered to do that for her. And then, the council would probably send people to brief her on the current standings of the operation and the expectations they had of her. Theora had no idea how they were planning to send her off to space or when or for how long. She didn’t know what items she should take up there, but for now she was pretty sure she’d leave most of her belongings behind. If she were to strand in the great nothing, she shouldn’t do that with heaps of high-grade magical items that could be of use down here. That meant, for the first time ever, she’d probably have to clean up her travelling attire.

She was looking forward to it. A final sorting through what her life had amounted to, a lot by quantity only. Something she could do alone, as opposed to the giant undertaking that was her mission into space with thousands of people already involved — the number growing rapidly as word spread.

As they strode past the building, they finally saw other people. Most were wearing wide and layered light linen attires, some had brighter more colourful clothing but it was a similar cut. Theora did not remember them having that style back during her childhood, but she knew that a single [Weaver] in town had made all of their clothing, so perhaps it was that way still, and this was simply the way that person liked to make them.

One girl in bright-red clothing broke off from her path as she saw the new arrivals, veering off the stone path and almost breaking into a run.

“Hey!” she said. Very long blonde hair, and smiling. “Welcome to Heofen? I’ve not seen you before.”

“Just arrived!” Dema said. “We’re gonna be stuck here until they shoot Bun Bun into space.”

The girl let out an incredulous laugh. “Wait, you look like the Ancient Evil!”

“Yours truly,” Dema said, nodding. “How’d you know what I look like?”

Bell winced strongly. “I— that’s my fault,” she said. “I was the only one who saw you after… Well, when my party tried to seal Theora. Scholars from this place asked me to give a description for their library.” She turned back to the girl. “Is… is it going to be a problem?”

The girl turned her head, hair falling down, revealing more of her freckled face. “Why would it be?”

Bell blinked, confused.

Theora was somewhat less confused. Sure, she’d been reared into the task of killing Dema, but that was such a long time ago, nobody involved was still alive. The town had likely forgotten. They had considered their task complete the moment they’d let little Theora loose, and then moved on to study other Ancients.

Dema being freed was an old tale to many now, with well over a century having passed since. There were probably few left to fear her.

The girl seemed to actually be waiting for an answer, so Bell shuddered, and mumbled a low, “Never mind.”

“Well,” the girl then said, “if you’re new here, is there anything you need? My name’s Amtilla. I study the Ancient Civilisation, so obviously, there’s not much for me to do.”

She looked very young for a scholar, but Theora would have probably been one as well at her age if the elders hadn’t destined her for something else after seeing her prowess in fighting. The term Ancient Civilisation nudged a tiny part of the oldest sections in Theora’s brain, but she was too lazy to excavate any of that.

“We have to stay here for a while,” Isobel said, “So you could help us find a place to sleep! Also, there’s libraries here, right? Could you give us a tour? Dema likes reading and I kinda wanna find stuff out too.”

Theora took a deep breath. This was looking good. Her companions were taking care of everything, and they’d find ways to keep themselves busy, so she herself could just find a corner somewhere to rot in.

“Don’t really need a place to stay,” Dema said suddenly. “I built a house! If you want, you can stay there too. Just gotta convince li’l rabbit to undress. We can use a wardrobe as our home, even.”

Alright, maybe things weren’t looking that good after all. But perhaps that would still work out. If the others were out a lot, Theora could hide at home. Maybe Theora’s darkness daffodil was already sprouting a little piece of night for her to crawl into.

Which reminded her that she had to go water it.

After fetching all their names, Amtilla agreed to give the tour, and started babbling about anything she could. Her knowledge seemed to stretch a few decades into the past. Most of the library buildings had been erected within the last century, because advancements in scroll-technology had allowed for more durable ways to make buildings. She explained how, in order to keep their knowledge safe for longer, they didn’t want to rely on old and monumental buildings without upgrading their durability.

Over time, other people casually joined the tour, giving their own accounts and explanations.

The town remembered Theora. Or rather, the town remembered that a hero of that name existed, and the people had read popular accounts. Meanwhile, Bell was doing her best to steer attention away from the topic.

But Theora did not remember the town. None of this rang a bell; if not for the name and the fields of wheat, it could have been any town. In fact, it was probably a different town altogether. There wasn’t a single thing left standing that made Theora know that this was the place she’d grown up in.

That’s what Theora thought until, about an hour into the tour, they found a rock.

It was a large rock, dull grey. Little horizontal indentations and faded ornaments lined half of it, where the other half was a broken mess. They’d put a little fence around it, and a plaque in front.

Remains of the Old Library, it said.

Theora stared at it for a long time.

This, she remembered. Yes, the Remains of the Old Library, they’d been here thousands of years ago already, but encased by a different fence, and denoted by a different plaque, with different words on it.

A piece of the distant past from her distant past. Theora thought that back then, the rock had been a lot larger. This little remnant of a ruin used to tower above her. Memories flashed of her sitting in its shade — or was it memories of other children sitting there? But it seemed bigger then, and Theora couldn’t tell if that was because more of it had degraded, or because she herself had grown.

Dema carelessly patted the library’s remains, giggling. “Love it! Little old rock!”

Isobel laughed, scuttling forward to touch it as well. “Wouldn’t surprise me if we were both older.”

Giving her a mischievous side glance, Dema now patted Isobel’s head. “Why, taken a liking to bragging with your age, have we? So cheeky.”

Bell stepped to their side, saying, “You should respect your elder, Dema,” and the way she was shyly folding her tendrils behind her back made it obvious that she was attempting to make a joke.

Dema went livid and jumped forward, with Bell dodging at the last moment, letting out a suppressed laugh. “Why, you of all people!” Dema let out. “Young sprout! How dare you. Barely even older than Amtilla over here.”

Theora used the commotion to step into the shadow of the ruins. She couldn’t help but smile a little. They were all so cute.

She shed her attire and left it for the others to find so they could enter Dema’s house, and then stealthily escaped to find some place to hide.