Chapter 31 World Building
Smoke and flames billowed into the skies.
Em let out a cheer, laughing at the spectacular chaos she’d caused. The final burst of heat and crumpled drywall imploded, falling into nothing but burning dust. Beside her, safely written away from the explosion, her fellow wards screamed and scattered in all directions.
Be free, you freaks. Go cause chaos. She grinned as they fled.
“You seem to take a lot of joy in destroying things,” Inky sang out from her hands.
“I really do.” Em wiped ash and sweat off her face. The thick, smoky air filled her lungs with relief now that she was free of the useless rehab.
“Maybe we should take the time to discuss better ways to process your frustrations as an author, other than wreaking havoc on your surroundings?” Inky asked brightly.
“Nah.” Em turned away from the explosion as it smoldered down into embers. She scanned the grassy field around her, basking in the warmth of the sunlight. “I already went through therapy today. I don’t need any more emotional advice.”
“If you say so,” Inky said. “While authors tend to take out their real-life experiences onto their characters, might I remind you that you are that Main Character for this plot? In the meantime, would you like to reunite with your party of companions?”
“Hell no,” she snorted. “I need to focus on the Lack of Orderly World building.”
Em carefully wrote her journal, her dress, and the dragon relic back into existence. Afterwards, she let the half-burnt piece of stray paper flutter away into the hot winds, taking all evidence of her pyromancy with it.
“I recommend finding a quiet, reclusive place to write for world-building sessions. Maybe somewhere with caffeine and a nice soundtrack,” Inky sang out. “A coffee shop or your bedroom closet is often a good place to focus.”
“Take me back to the Long Rest Tavern and Inn.”
“Are you sure…”
“Now, Inky!” Em barked.
“On it!” The pen sang out.
With a snap and a jolt, reality shifted. Em collapsed onto her knees, blood rushing through her pounding head. Everything swayed, watery and blurry, as her weary mind frayed from the excruciating stretching sensation of a time-jump.
She curled into a fetal position against the wooden floor beneath her. The stench of alcohol and body odor permeated her senses. The muffled, joyous chaos of the Long Rest Tavern and Inn stretched in the distance from her ringing ears.
Em moaned, pushing herself upright. As best as her trembling hands allowed her, she wrote herself access to one of the bedrooms upstairs.
Thankfully, none of the tavern guests, guild members, or adventuring parties throughout the dining room paid her any mind. It was like she’d become invisible after the crimes she’d committed a few moments ago. Their laughter and light chatter surrounded her.
The numb tug for her missing companions simmered inside her. Then the bitter memory of their horrified expressions at her deleting the Shelley’s Ghostly Swamps reawakened her resentment. They’d turned against her when she needed them most, not even giving her a chance to try to set things right.
A rumble rattled across the tavern. Gasps and exclamations rose between guests as the earth quaked again.
Right. Em had no time. Novella needed fixing.
She limped up the creaky stairs, wincing.
Every joint and muscle in her body ached with exhaustion from the chaotic day.
She snuck inside the first, unoccupied bedroom she found and bolted the door.
The stillness, the hovering flecks of dust, the faint white noise of the tavern underfoot were welcoming.
Em let out a deep breath, numb with exhaustion.
Finally.
The room had a small twin-sized bed covered in patchwork quilts, an unlit oil lamp, and a rickety desk with a stool in the corner. Just the exact things she needed.
“Now would be an excellent time to begin working on your world-building process,” Inky sang out from her grip. “Would you like any assistance in the writing procedures?”
“Yes please.” Em slammed her journal onto the desk, sliding the stool underneath herself. Relief swept through her sore limbs. Weariness clouded her mind, but she didn’t have time to be tired; she needed to write.
“A good place to begin is to set the time of day,” Inky began.
Em flipped to a blank page in the back of her book, scratching into the top of the page: NOVELLA.
Without too much thought, she wrote in the evening, detailing how a nice sunset cast across the realms and how, in a few hours, it would become night.
Outside the window, a purplish dusk hung over Mercer Village.
Everything shifted according to her willpower.
With a stroke of her hand, the soothing drone of crickets silenced the busy streets.
The fatigue seeped deeper into her, but Em rubbed her dry eyes and fought to keep focus. One mistake in her writing and another disaster could happen.
If I fix this world-building situation and rewrite the swamp I deleted, the others will understand me.
“Due to the situation of blending genre regions and the heightened risk it poses for Kriqir the Living’s impending invasion, I recommend moving on towards the concept of co-residency,” Inky said just as Em finished her final sentence about how the night would play out peacefully without any mayhem or danger.
“You should focus on making sure each realm returns to its proper geographical and consanguinity rules.”
“I don’t know if I can remember all of this,” Em leaned her head into her elbows, letting out a groan. Already, a twisted ache drilled into the nape of her skull.
Why was being a writer so fucking complicated?
“A good place to begin this process is focusing on what you know best, then working outwards from there,” Inky said.
Instantly, the sea cliffs and forest hills of Adventuras Island filled Em’s mind. How sweet Mom’s caramel taffy tasted and clung to her teeth. The huff and snorts of Dad’s camels in the front yard.
Her hands flew as she wrote about home, threading reality between her scratchy handwriting along the page of her journal. Images transformed into words as she mused. A peace filled her, and the emptiness of her missing companions drifted away.
Em’s mind drowned in the hyper-fixated process of writing.
She let the world flit across her memory into existence along the page: cultural norms of home, the social aspects of Sanderson’s School for Main Characters, the weather patterns this time of year as the spring blossoms began to green into summery leaves, and the relationships between the local towns.
From there, Em split off to each realm she’d encountered along her quest, and she even tried her best to have Inky walk her through the process of rewriting the Shelley Ghostly Swamps and Dinniman Dungeon.
It might not be enough. It might’ve been too much.
Em couldn’t tell. Between sentences, doubt would creep in, and she’d scribbled out some words to revise them into something stronger, clearer, better.
Or, pure confidence would flow through her, and she knew she’d been as efficient as possible.
It was like trying to weave a web, but never actually being a spider.
Em wrote geography, magic, technology, culture, meteorology, conlang, cosmology, religions, consistency, borders—anything and everything she could think of that Inky threw at her.
Her brain melted into mush, her fingers felt miles away with how long she’d ignored their soreness, and a fog settled over her.
But the earthquakes stopped.
And a sense of completion, of order settled over her.
Maybe I’m getting the hang of this author thing.
“That covers it for now!” Inky finally sang out from her hands.
Em dropped the pen with a moan in relief, massaging her cramped wrists.
A pink sliver cut across the sky outside, telling her the morning was upon Novella. She had stayed up all night to write.
“How long will that keep everything in order, Inky?” Em peeled herself from the desk and flopped onto her stomach on the squeaky bed.
Despite the stiffness of the mattress and flatness of the pillow, she buried her face into it all, breathing in the fresh, cloudy detergent that wafted in the sheets.
“About a week,” the pen called out from the desk.
“A week?” Em sat upright, blood rushing to her head.
She winced as vertigo swayed the reality about her.
She’d need at least a week to recover from the long night and then another to figure out how to reunite with her companions again.
Then, a third to even reset the cliché disaster her plotline had veered into again.
“Novella is a large world with many diverse aspects,” Inky said happily. “It requires an advanced author to maintain, grow, and develop without further consequences.”
Shit. Em groaned, sinking back into the bed. How was she going to ever finish this damn story without it consuming all her time? Surely there had to be some way to set the world into autopilot without needing a Great Author to dictate and hold everything together.
“Would now be a good time to discuss and review your current descent into the questline’s antagonist?” Inky went on, apparently never actually tired or aware of their surroundings. “Because a prophetic plotline with a Chosen One cannot contain two main villains.”
“No.” Em threw the pillow at the pen, sending both pen and her journal tumbling across the bedroom floor.
For once, Inky didn’t reply.
I’m not the villain. Em took a deep breath to steady herself. I’m not the damn villain. I’m just… fucking complicated.
A fist hammered against the bolted door.
“Open up!” a gruff voice called.
Em tangled her aching fingers into the sheets.
Fuck.
“By treaties and agreements of the Leiber Guild, we cannot allow villains in this establishment!” The bartender, Rex, shouted through the door. “It disrupts the peace…”
“Yeah, yeah.” Em plugged her ears. “Just give me five minutes.”
When was the last time I slept?
“If you don’t see yourself out, scoundrel, my guests will have to force you out.” Rex’s muffled, heartless laugh still managed to get into her head. “And there’s a lot of intermediate guild members downstairs who’d love to get a piece of you after your orc episode yesterday.”
The gory image of exploding orcs destroyed any chance of Em drifting off. She crawled from the bed, retrieving Inky and her journal from the floor.
“Alright, fine,” she grumbled.
“Any attempt to teleport in your current mental and physical condition would not be recommended at this time,” Inky sang out from her hand. “You have already jumped scenes around half a dozen times within the past fifteen hours, in technical terms.”
Shit. Em froze in the middle of the bedroom.
Her heart raced at the idea of facing all the trigger-happy guild members down in the tavern.
She checked the window; it was narrow, but she could squeeze through if she broke through the glass pane.
Her room overlooked the porch’s roof, which meant she could climb out to it and drop into the street.
Rex hammered at the door again. “Don’t make me use my keys, villain!”
“I’m going… I’m going. Chill the fuck out.” Em erased the window glass from existence in her journal. A whiff of fresh morning air swept through the room.
She carefully wrote to extend the width to the dimensions of the window frame before slipping out onto the roof.
The slant of the shingles was awkward. Em braced herself against the side of the wall as she struggled to write the window into its original state, then added a rope ladder from the rooftop to the ground below.
A few curious, prying villagers watched from the streets below.
She paused as she assessed her ladder. Where the hell do I go?
Exhaustion clawed at her again, answering for her. She needed a bed, a bath, and somewhere to hide.
“Can you give me the coordinates for the One Bed Inn?” Em asked.
At least the gnome Myffie who ran it had been nonjudgmental. It might require a lot of walking to get back to the Veil of Maas, but she was desperate. Once she got some sleep, she would be able to think straight again and get back to some semblance of normalcy.
“I will run an estimate on that information right away!” Inky sang out.
Thank, Novella.
Stuffing the pen and journal back into her pockets, Em began her descent to the streets. The rope ladder swayed underneath her, but she managed to climb down without falling—despite how much her limbs strained.
Once solid ground met her feet, Em let out a sigh.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” a voice demanded.
Em whirled around, a half-dozen glares and scowls meeting her gaze.
Her party stood on the porch of the Long Rest Tavern and Inn, arms crossed.
Shit.