And with that, through a single and quick slash of her sword, the Devil of Truth turned into but a splash of blood on the ceiling. Theora felt the surrounding pressure in the air cease as the [Realm] began to crumble.

You have killed the Devil of Truth.

You have completed a Side Quest.

Rolling rewards…

Theora dismissed the notifications and turned her gaze back to the dining hall. Something was wrong. In the blink of an eye, she rushed to kneel over Dema.

“Why are you not healing?”

Dema coughed up a splurge of blood to clear her throat, and then rasped a short, “Can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“Guy disabled my… regen stuff before he…” She whispered the words very slowly, stopping a few times to catch her breath. “Done for.”

“You’re done for?”

“Yeah,” Dema gurgled, then swallowed a pool of blood that had gathered in her mouth. “Gotta… carry.”

Theora stared. She wasn’t just making this up to get picked up, was she?

After a short moment of collecting herself, Dema finally opened her eyes and looked up at Theora with her amber gaze.

“Princess carry,” she specified.

Meanwhile, the blood reached Theora’s boots, and a gut-wrenching feeling spread through her. She bowed down, wrapped her arms around Dema’s shoulders and knees, and lifted her up with a careful and smooth motion, to make sure not to cause unnecessary pain. Dema was very light. Theora felt like she was carrying an injured bird.

[Immortality] prevented her from dying, but nothing else. It was a Skill of the highest rank, and as such, the Devil of Truth would not have been able to impair it. At least not if it was a Legendary Skill from someone as strong as the Ancient Evil. Even Theora’s [Obliterate], while likely reducing Dema to a permanent gory puddle, would not necessarily kill her. The only known way to strip away [Immortality] was the scroll Theora was carrying with her because of her Main Quest.

However, [Immortality] didn’t grant any healing capabilities on its own, so with them gone, Dema would suffer.

And Dema would suffer in that way because of Theora. Because Theora had used her to complete a random side quest that Dema had no relation to. How long would it take for the Skills to reactivate? Hours? Days? Months?

Theora was really the worst thing that could have ever been inflicted on that poor little girl.

Slowly, she started walking out of the hall. Dema snuggled up against her, weakly grasping Theora’s shoulder with her leftover arm. Her golden lips pulled up into a faint mischievous smile, her eyes still looking up at the face of her companion.

“Finally… got you to carry. A hundred years… took long enough. Love it,” she whispered, as if this was an incredible accomplishment. “Not gonna lie… I got the hots for this.”

A little spark glittered in her eyes, and then she repeated what she’d already said a few minutes before, but this time, with a weakness in her voice that yet carried the selfsame amount of vitriolic awe.

“My little saviouress.”

A wave of utter despair washed over Theora, and she needed to exert an enormous power of will to not recoil or jerk away with Dema in her arms. Her lower lip started wobbling. This really was too much.

As the [Realm] faded away completely, a few glances out the window showed utter destruction under the night’s sky. In her attempt to fight a demon where he was invincible, Dema had wrecked the entire hospital save the dining hall, had pumped out so much blood, parts of the ground and wreckage now poked out from it in lagoons. Had broken it all down with boulders shaped like blades, rocky pillars pushed from the ground, and what looked like meteors fallen from the sky.

She’d ripped apart the space in search of the Devil of Truth, and then pulled him out where he was supposed to be a king.

And she’d done so on Theora’s request, and paid the price.

“I’m sorry,” Theora muttered, and pulled Dema in just a little bit closer.

This last hour was just like their entire journey, wasn’t it? She went and put Dema in mortal danger, and then Dema would go on to call her a ‘saviouress’. She was still smiling and cuddling, her horn gently grazing over Theora’s cloak, as if nothing in the world could make her as happy as being carried around like this. As if it was a reward for her efforts, as if it had all been worth it.

Smiling, while her severed arm was still lying back in the abandoned hospital dining hall.

But how could Theora possibly reject her? How could she possibly look at this and say, ‘No, Dema, you’re wrong.’

She couldn’t. But she couldn’t accept it either.

Dema’s devastation stretched until far beyond the former edges of the [Realm], remote pieces of wreckage still scattered across the landscape, broken into houses in the village, or strewn around in the surrounding wild meadows.

Theora just kept wading through Dema’s blood, step after step through the ruins. Where was she even going?

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Countless stars gave light to her roaming, but the side quest was completed. They were aimless. The only thing she felt now was a certain, unusual tightness in her chest she could barely explain, and Dema’s body, almost weightless, and oh so soft. Still bleeding, the drops of her blood joined the pools on the ground in faint pitter-patter.

Right. If anything, Dema was the one who would get to decide.

“What do you want to do?” Theora asked.

Dema hummed in thought, then giggled deliriously. “Lie down somewhere pretty, maybe?” she said. “Find us pretty.”

And thus, Theora set out to ‘find somewhere pretty’. How could a Blight like her even dare to judge what that would look like? Yet, she wanted Dema to lie down and rest, so she still gave it her all.

Eventually, she found a half-ruined two-story house at the other end of the village. It had a slanted roof, accessible by stairs to its sides, and so she carried Dema up there, took off the bloodsoaked, ragged cloak and gently laid her down on a window extrusion. There, Dema could look up at the vast and cloudless night’s sky.

Then, Theora started rummaging in the interdimensional pockets of her layered travelling cloak. She must have something on her to help, right? One useless magical item after the next, she pulled from her clothes and just let them fall down the roof for lack of space to put them. It all clattered down like the junk it was.

Eventually, she found a vial of endless water, small and crystal blue with an ornamental shape. Some reward she must have received a long time ago. She barely remembered.

And, she found a long white dress of hers, so she ripped it apart. After soaking a shred of it with the vial, she gently cleaned the skin around Dema’s wounds. She bandaged the remaining long scraps of the dress around Dema’s shoulder and torso, to help stop the bleedings and cover that large hole where her heart used to be.

Only when she was done did she notice Dema’s face weakly beaming up at her.

“What?” Theora asked, feeling a little caught.

“Doting on me,” Dema rasped. “Cute.”

A small shiver went down Theora’s spine. “I’m not doting on you. You are injured, so I am making sure you will be alright.”

“Immortal.”

Theora stared down at the amber eyes that were almost mocking her. “So, I should have just left you like that?”

“Could have,” Dema supplied. “But didn’t. Feels good.”

Theora gently shook her head. What was going on in that little head of Dema’s? How did that brain of hers come up with these strings of words in a situation like this?

Eventually, after making sure about three times that Dema was alright, she laid down next to her as well. The pressure ebbed away from her slowly. It seemed like Dema was going to be fine.

Well. For a given definition of ‘fine’. Maybe her body would fully regenerate eventually, but then, when she was free of dizziness and pain and the delirium of her trauma reaction, she’d realise how badly Theora had messed her up, and probably change her mind about all this.

But right now, Dema seemed happy, gazing up at the stars, even resting her head against Theora’s shoulder.

‘A pretty place.’ Had Theora done that wish justice? She’d always found the sky beautiful, and from the looks of it, Dema was satisfied. And tonight’s sky was a true awe to behold.

Oh, so many stars. With its low population density, this was maybe one of the many darkest places on the planet. Nebulae and galaxies were visible to the naked eye, together with the wide stretch of cloudy stars that halved the firmament.

Both moons were absent that night.

The universe was such a large place. Such a wide, immense space, and Theora was just a tiny speck somewhere within it. Yet, just a short while ago inside the [Realm], she’d held it all between her mere fingertips.

Theora still felt that incredible tightness within her chest, ever since the fight. It pulled away at her heart, around her lungs, like a gaping hole. Or, was it a hole at all? Perhaps, simply, there was something in there now for a change?

If so, what was it? She’d first felt it while being attacked by the Devil. That pull as his efforts had sunk into her. Had she taken damage?

But it didn’t really feel like damage. Yes, the attacks of the Truth had affected her somehow, they’d left their mark, but rather than harm, they felt like…

Inspiration?

The Devil of Truth, in his desperate last attempt, had tried to create another reality to escape to, one without Theora in it. Another reality as big and large and all-encompassing as the starry sky she gazed into right now.

Wasn’t that such a good idea? Splitting reality to avoid one’s problems. It hadn’t worked out for him, but maybe it would work out for her. As that idea sparked, the tightness in her chest unfolded, like soft foam growing to fill her up inside.

She couldn’t accept Dema’s feelings, but she couldn’t reject them either. Both realities were impossible to live in. Murderer or saviour? It was both too much.

If she was her murderer, she couldn’t live with herself, but at least that world made sense to her. It would make sense for Dema to secretly hate her, and for Theora to accept her fate and do what — according to the world — needed to be done. It was a terrible fate, but in it, all questions were answered and everything fit together like a perfectly solved puzzle.

If she was Dema’s saviour, maybe they could live together in peace, become happy, and cherish each other, just like Dema insinuated to want. But that kind of world was full of contradictions. Theora did not deserve Dema’s appreciation, nor did she deserve to be happy, nor was it reasonable or believable for Dema to actually think that way at all. A reality like that would collapse as they were trying to build it.

She couldn’t live in either world, but as paradoxical as it sounded, maybe she could live in both?

What if she simply accepted both worlds to be the truth? Acted in such a way that it would always fit either option, ignorant of what actually lay beneath. A superimposed set of realities, like a dissonant chord of fates that would ring in her ears forever, and when one frequency became too much to bear, she’d switch and listen to the other. A cat caught in a box that was both alive and dead at the same time, and all Theora needed to do was to never look inside.

Yes… that could work. She wouldn’t have to reject Dema, but she also wouldn’t have to believe her.

The idea, implanted into her mind and body by the actions and attacks of the Devil of Truth, somehow, she felt cosy in it.

As they lay there, on the roof, staring into the night, a small swarm of shooting stars soared through the sky. Dema’s head still rested against Theora’s shoulder. Panting deeply, she yet gave small cheers at every falling star she saw.

Theora’s heart almost gave out at the sight. Oh, yes. For this, splitting the universe in two might be worth it. Maybe she wouldn’t have to kill Dema for now.

Looking at her idea from an outside perspective, attempting to be objective, she felt like it was still horrifying, and that she was still an awful person, but that ultimately, this was progress. Maybe things would be okay. Maybe gazing up into the night and seeing two sets of stars overlapping could make her deal with all this horror.

When she had that very thought, a notification popped up right in front of her mind, transparent against the starry sky. Theora stared in disbelief. She blinked a few times on reflex, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

Ah… oh, no. She’d not seen a prompt like this in an eternity. That was far too pretty. A term that graceful, to be carried by something like her? No, it couldn’t be right. This couldn’t be the conclusion of all that had transpired until now. It felt unfair.

And yet, she still had the tiniest, most whimsical hope that she could actually embrace it. To try and, if at all possible, give it justice in some way. A faint desire, running through her body like a soft shiver.

You have unlocked a new Class!

By glancing into different realities, you can reveal the hidden fates of any ‘would’ and ‘never-will-be’ implied within the fabric of the world.

Do you wish to become a [Stargazer]?