About two minutes before hitting the second patch of magic mould, Isobel re-established the connection.

“Hey there,” she said, sounding tired and shaken. “Ready to hit the mould?”

“What is happening?” Theora asked.

Isobel clattered around. Two clicks resounded, probably from her mandibles. “You are on an important mission,” she murmured. “We have to make sure your state of mind remains stable. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to keep some things from you until the task is done, since you can’t do anything about it anyway, and it would just be pointless to worry.”

Theora considered the words for a few moments, then said, “Please worry me a little.”

Isobel sighed. “Alright. Things are bad here. But we will deal with it. Let’s keep the planet from being eaten, then I’ll fill you in. Are you ready?”

Theora sent out a few messages to other people in hopes that one of them would tell her the truth. Then, she sent an affirmation to Isobel, and prepared herself.

She activated another Wish of Flight soon after entry, and then used it to weasel herself out of the fog, and then to fly around to the other side, with Isobel’s instructions because it wasn’t easy to navigate such a massive cloudy object. It took her hours to get to the other side, and then, Isobel gave instructions on how to throw the next batch of blood stone.

“Once you’ve completed expelling the propellants, you’ll have thirteen hours before hitting today’s second patch of mould.”

“Right,” Theora said. “But that won’t leave enough time to use the Orb to fly around it.”

Isobel clacked. “Yes, but you’ll hit it at an angle. No need to fly around because the next patch is not directly behind it. It’s enough if you bounce off, so to speak.”

Theora vaguely remembered hearing something like that in the mission briefings.

Then, Isobel started a countdown. In the meantime, Theora fetched one of the largest-class propellants she had loaded. When Isobel reached zero, Theora said, “Initiating throw,” and with a shockwave, launched it into the mould.

“Alright, that worked well. Thank you very much,” Isobel finished with a tired voice, and clicked off the connection.

They only had a few hours of instant-communication left. It was the correct thing to do. And yet, Theora wanted to keep hearing her voice. Didn’t want to be alone.

Half a day later, and after a few more short drop-bys from Isobel letting Theora know about the state of the trajectory and necessary corrections, Theora was met with the one thing she really had not wanted to see during this entire journey. The one thing she’d hoped she’d be spared of.

A prompt from the System.

Theora barely had enough time to read it before it flickered out.

For a moment, she was confused, because she hadn’t closed it. But then she realised that her party screen was gone too.

The messages were gone.

Everything was gone.

She was no longer connected to the Interface; she’d left the range of the System.

It was like the System had waited to prompt this quest at her until the very last moment.

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So the range of the System was about two-hundred thirty billion units of distance, then. Theora wished she’d known, because then she could have said goodbye.

That also meant Theora would have to use her Skills without the System’s aid from now on, and would not be able to read the next chapter Balinth had been busy typing down for her.

She wouldn’t know if Helena’s new cake recipe had been a success. She wouldn’t know if Ulfine’s co-worker really had found a lead on their current research matter or if it had been a false alarm. Not that it had anything to do with the Fragments of Time, but Theora had gotten invested nonetheless, since there was not much else to get invested in.

Not much else except for the looming cloud of uncertainty pertaining to why her party had fallen apart. There were some innocuous explanations. Dema had left the party at exactly 60 %. So it was possible that she’d just left so Theora didn’t see her break the rules, and get worried. It might have been a split-second decision. In fact, the number being exactly that made pretty much any other explanation unlikely.

Dema had left so Theora wouldn’t worry. Of course, Theora was still worried. Dema would also have known to send a calming message if it had been possible. She wasn’t the type of person who’d just leave Theora hanging like this, if she could have avoided it.

Which meant she’d been extraordinarily occupied. And if she was with Bell, then Bell might have left the party in order to form a new one with Dema. That was the innocuous, and most probable course of events. And it made sense.

It explained why Bell had asked Dema to stay behind. The strongest hero had abandoned her home planet, and Bell had likely begged Dema to stay behind in case something slumbering beneath its surface would use the opportunity to strike, like the Devil of Truth had when it assumed the Roaming Blight had died.

They were, most likely, doing Theora’s job.

Of course, there remained two less likely, but more terrifying explanations for what was happening.

Bell, in coordination with the System, might have used this opportunity to dispatch the Ancient Evil in Theora’s absence. Or, Dema, being the Ancient Evil, might have taken her chances to show her true colours.

These were the three explanations Theora could come up with, especially considering that if it was anything else, Isobel would have likely just told her. All of these were deeply worrying, and Theora wouldn’t feel better if she knew which it was that had occurred.

In any case, this was happening because she’d blown a hole into her home planet millennia ago, attracted the attention of an all-devouring monster, and then abandoned everyone she’d sworn to protect in order to clean up her mess.

Soon, Theora arrived at the third patch; unfortunately she wouldn’t make it to the fourth patch in time since they were running low on propulsion material.

The days went by in a haze. No more messages. Only the occasional mission-related message from Isobel. Theora navigated patch after patch, corrected her course, threw propellants. She didn’t really know what she was doing. She used the third Orb on what Isobel claimed to be the thirteenth day, eventually hit another patch of magic mould, and then launched herself onward to the very last patch — her destination.

“I’ll keep watching over you,” Isobel said. “I’m taking care of you every single second. We don’t have a lot of time left to talk, so I want you to know that. I won’t abandon you, ever. I will always be here, even if you can’t hear me.”

“Thank you,” Theora said, and it made her feel a lot better. None was the only person left in her life now.

She was almost four-hundred billion units of distance away from home, completely shut-off save for this one connection, and she’d spend the next few days simply drifting through space, no further adjustments needed.

And then she’d flare her power to attract the Ancient Devourer.

Until then, Theora could sleep. Isobel would wake her up when it was time.

And so, Theora detached her mind from her dead body, and tried to doze off. She could stop forcing her eyes to stay functional. She couldn’t find a comfortable position, but she didn’t need to feel her limbs. She couldn’t stop thinking about what might have gone wrong at home, but she could stop forcing herself conscious and alive.

The sleep was dreamless and numbing, but it was the first real sleep she’d allowed herself since before launch. Now, not much could go wrong. She no longer had any propellant left, had no Wish of Flight active, and nothing to worry about until she’d hit that last mould and made it to safe distance.

Four more days, 80 billion more units of distance, and they’d barely scratch the margin of safety and keep the planet outside the Ancient Devourer’s Skill range.

For now, everything had gone mostly well. Not ideal, but not catastrophic either.

That is, until Theora was violently woken up by Isobel’s voice.

“Mom, wake up! Something’s wrong!”

Theora wanted to blink, but couldn’t. “Isobel?”

Where was she? It was cold.

“Quick,” Isobel shouted. “Get ready for impa—”

BOOM.