Chapter 32 Foreshadowing
How the hell did you get here?” Em demanded.
“We walked.” Gair wrinkled his nose. “A long long long way.”
“No thanks to you,” Roden growled.
“Hey, walking helps create better glutes, and that creates sexier asses,” Polo giggled to himself, earning a glare from the half-elf.
“Did you get released from the Revision Rehabilitation Center early?” Ming asked, flashing a bright smile in the assortment of everyone else’s disappointed faces.
Sasha’s glare was especially sharp. Em averted her gaze to avoid making eye contact with the fuming dryad. Gair, Roden, and Polo appeared unfazed. The other interns weren’t with them anymore.
“Yeah.” Em wiped at her face, hoping there wasn’t any remaining soot on her from the detonated hospital. She pointed an accusatory finger at the mentor-in-training. “But you have explaining to do, Ming. First off, what the fuck was the whole rehab thing? Second, where did all the other interns go?”
“You hired me to mentor you,” the Tiefling held her hands up in defense. “After the Dinniman Dungeon, I sent Marq, Jane, and Harry back to Larian for their safety. But I’m stubborn and wanted to see this through to make sure you’re okay. I’m trying my best…”
“I don’t need rehab!” Em screamed, stomping her foot. “I needed support!
“I thought I was supporting you,” Ming argued. “After the genocide…”
“Lay off her, sweetheart,” Sasha cut in. “You made a mistake, and we needed you to accept or at least acknowledge that.”
“I made a mistake?” Em exclaimed.
“You’re not perfect,” the dryad retorted.
“I literally just spent all night writing to stop the earthquakes!” Em said, throwing her hands in exasperation. “And this is the thanks I get?”
“Oh, great, so you tried to do the bare minimum,” Sasha rolled her eyes. “That doesn’t change your other oversights.’
Deep in her soul, Em knew she’d missed information during her world-building session.
She couldn’t remember every realm or region in her world, or every species, much less the endless categories of genres.
She had managed to write what she could and left the rest up to fate.
It was a small patch over a gaping wound in Novella, but it had to do for now.
“We could try to fix this,” Ming’s offer was muffled by the pounding of Em’s heart in her ears.
“Right, maybe we can work together to help Em get better at this writing thing,” Gair added.
“How?” Roden demanded.
“I don’t know!” Em exploded. The tears pricked at her eyes again, and she somehow forgot how to breathe.
“I didn’t mean to! None of this was supposed to happen, and now I don’t know how to fix it!
Rehab wasn’t what I needed! I needed you to help me.
I don’t know how to achieve my dreams and still make everyone happy!
I don’t know how to both save and ruin this shitty plot at the same time!
I don’t even know how to make something original anymore without making someone else furious at me or the plotline punishing me for it! I don’t fucking know!”
She dropped into the street on her knees, the world blurring past her sobs. The smoke of the burnt Revision Rehabilitation still clung to her lungs.
From the tavern porch, her Side Characters all stared or glared at her. None of them crossed the wide gap to comfort her. It was like she was an entirely different species from them. All around, the world fell silent as if to listen and savor her weeping.
Em was alone.
And so so lost.
Beneath her, Novella shuddered and quaked again.
Fuck. Em curled into a ball in the dirt, groaning past her tears. She tried to rack her weary brain for what she might’ve missed during her writing session last night. What realm had she forgotten to fix? What complicated aspect of world-building did she overlook?
“Em, what’s happening?” Ming’s silhouette stood over her, cocking her horned head.
“The world is falling apart,” Em grumbled.
Roden and Sasha’s swearing almost made her laugh. Helplessness and hopelessness washed over her. A sense of overwhelming numbness blocked every other emotion from passing through her brain. Maybe she blew up the stupid rehab center too soon.
“Anything I can do to try to help?” Ming asked. “If you don’t need rehab, tell me what you need. I can’t guide you if you don’t let me…”
“No,” Em pushed herself upright, wincing. At least she managed to stop crying. “It’s part of my Great Author duties to hold everything in Novella together. And you’re right, Sasha, I haven’t been a very good one.”
Roden’s glare darkened.
“No, you haven’t,” Sasha spat. “You’ve been too busy committing genocide.”
“Will you please forgive me, Sasha?” Em begged, flinching. “It was an accident. I really am trying to make things right again.”
“Oh, right, because deleting an entire region is such a small, minor mistake. No big deal at all,” the dryad waved Em’s apology away. Like it meant nothing. “I thought all Great Authors were horrible people. It seems I was right. And you’re a horrible author on top of it.”
Damn. Em’s jaw clamped shut.
The words stung.
“Are you going to delete more realms because they inconvenience you, sweetheart?” Sasha demanded.
“Are you going to erase places you’re destined to inherit, like the White Rose Valley or Cursed-But-Once-Uncursed-Tower, just cause you think they’re too cliché?
What about the Veil of Maas or all those stereotypical adventurers in the Leiber Guild?
You really think I haven’t seen the way you despise them; despise us? ”
“I would never.”
“I don’t believe you,” Sasha snapped. “Nor do I believe you were able to fix the Shelley’s Ghostly Swamps.”
“Maybe you could get another Great Author to do it,” Ming said.
“Is there any way you can get in touch with them, like you did with Stephanie? Maybe we need to get you back to the FOURTH WALL. I’m sure the other Great Authors could fix this world-building thing so you can focus on finishing your quest… ”
A realization struck Em. It was like the weight of the world came crashing down on her.
If there were other Great Authors, they would’ve already fixed the Lack of Orderly World Building.
She would’ve been able to sleep last night and not exhaust her fingers by writing as much as humanly possible.
Other Great Authors would’ve been able to prevent Em from deleting the ghost swamp and thwarting Kriqir from conquering any of the regions or the blending of genres.
If there were other writers, the earthquakes never would’ve happened.
Stephanie Sawyer wasn’t a Great Author.
She had been the Great Author.
The only one.
And Em had stolen everything from her.
Fuck.
All of Novella was at the mercy of Em’s fingertips now, dependent on her glittery quill-pen. All the other stories, all the other background characters in the realms that Sasha had been vouching for, all the complicated aspects of her world—all of it.
Em held the entire fate of her world in her hands.
No wonder yesterday had been one long, chaotic day.
She could see it now on her companions: their ashen faces, the weariness in their clouded eyes, the hunch of their shoulders.
and the stress creases along their brows.
Em was draining them. She’d she kept pushing and pushing to find answers to her small problems and let Novella slowly unravel into an unstable disarray in her selfishness.
Em pulled Inky back out. She needed to fix this before everything became worse.
“Oh, no you don’t!” In a flash, Sasha sprang forward and snatched the pen straight from her hands.
“Shit!” Em scrambled, grabbing at air. The agile dryad darted away with the precious pen. Panic drowned her. She chased after Sasha, screaming and staggering to keep up as they raced about the village streets.
The ground rumbled again, throwing her off balance. Em gasped as her legs were ripped out from underneath her, knees chafing against the dirt. Rawness bled from her scraped skin.
“Give it back!” she screamed.
“You appear to have lost control over the main plotline of this quest,” Inky sang out from Sasha’s clutches as the dryad ran about like a madwoman to avoid Em.
Apparently, the pen was indifferent to being kidnapped.
“Would you like to discuss ways to work through therapeutic communicational processes to help reconnect with your Side characters?”
“Give me back my damn pen!” Em screamed, stumbling upright to chase Sasha again. “Sasha don’t…” agony shot through her.
Something popped in her ribcage. All sense of direction was ripped away. She fell flat onto her back, air torn from her lungs and whiteness swelling across her vision. Nothing but stinging pain swept across her before reality melted back together.
A sharp weight dug into her sides. Roden had mounted her, squeezing his knees into her ribs. He pinned her shoulders down with his hands.
“Fuck, let me go…” she grunted and tried to flail, but the half-elf was significantly stronger, unfazed by her struggle. “Roden please!”
Staining her neck, Em saw how Sasha rejoined the group, holding Inky to her chest and smirking tauntingly back at her. The others just watched. No one helped her. No one protested that Sasha had taken the pen away, the very pen that held control over their whole world.
Em let out a frustrated shriek.
Shit, shit, shit.
Why had she thought she could save or change these cliché characters?
Of course, they didn’t care about her story or how original it ended.
They were all connected to the shitty questline anyway.
The Blanket Blob had basically told her so.
They’d been the reason she’d failed all along by getting in her way or trying to stop her.
None of them had ever really believed in her.
These Side Characters were the real enemies of her story, not the necromancer in the tower. They had betrayed her, just like everything else in Novella.
Just like her own Great Author had.