Regrettably, Dema and the others had set up the house not too far away from Theora’s hometown, and by extension, her former training grounds.

Of course, they’d done so out of consideration — they knew that this was where Theora needed to go to find another Fragment of Time. It had been well over a hundred years, and all of them had travelled parts of the world since then, even going as far as to visit the Land of the Dead on a different continent.

But when it was time to fetch Theora back from space, they’d settled here; close to her hometown, a few weeks travel away from that awful place.

It was impossible to tell how much longer the Rains of Fire would last, but Theora didn’t want to make Time wait any longer than necessary. And thus, back home and no immediate problems left to solve, with Dema and Isobel back, Theora could no longer postpone the journey.

“I think we should leave the house behind,” Dema said during dinner in the living room — Theora had baked bread for everyone. “Bell needs somewhere to stay.”

Isobel nodded. “Yeah. We join Mom, and Bell stays to take care of the Rains of Fire.”

“Neither of you strictly have to join,” Theora said. “I will have to go fetch the Fragment on my own anyway.”

“But I wanna see that place!” Iso whined. “I wonder if there’s stuff to learn and analyse. Also, I still haven’t gotten to [Compute] your [Obliterate]... I know you’re shy about it, but…”

Theora looked away. There just hadn’t been a good opportunity so far. “Of course, you can join, if you want to,” she said eventually, and was met with enthusiastic nods from both Dema and Iso.

Alright, fine. They’d visit her training grounds together. She’d long-since abandoned any ideas of keeping its location secret anyway.

Theora’s eyes jumped over to Bell, who was focused on her meal. “Will you be alright on your own?”

“Of course,” Bell said.

It had come to Theora’s attention that Bell sometimes, in specific circumstances, actually did lie. And this was clearly one of Bell’s rare lies. Her voice sounded laden and she deliberately avoided eye contact.

“Someone needs to take care of Treeka anyway. So I won’t really be alone. Also, I’m sure you will keep me posted via the alliance chat. So I won’t… really… be alone.”

“Right!” Iso said. “Going to send lots of messages, all the time!”

Bell nodded. The assurance seemed to cheer her up.

And so, after packing up, they set out on the same day, to take advantage of the remaining hours of safety from Bell’s worldwide barrier. They left the umbrella behind for her.

If everything went well, Isobel and Dema could return within a month or two, although Theora suspected she herself would need a while longer to get the Fragment, if her experience in To Hell With the Author was anything to go by.

Both Isobel and Dema were fairly resilient, but on the fourth day, the group noticeably slowed down.

“Are you alright?” Dema asked when Isobel had to sit down for the third time within an hour.

“Sorry,” Iso let out, using a moss patch to soak up the golden raindrops that were seeping into the crannies of her body. Her movements were jittery and clumsy. “I thought being made of rock would make me less affected… How does Bell do it…”

They were trying to walk under covers as much as possible, but most covers had already been eroded.

“Bell probably does it by acting like nothing is wrong and ignoring the pain,” Dema mused, and formed an umbrella-shaped bowl from her blood, holding it over Isobel for protection. “There we go!”

Isobel eyed the umbrella with suspicion. “Will you be fine?”

Dema shrugged. “Gotta take care of you, right? And my regen will probably hold this for a few years.”

“I miss Bell,” Theora murmured one day as they were balancing over a foot-wide blood bridge Dema had casually conjured to help them cross a gigantic ravine. Theora remembered this place from her childhood; monsters lurked in its depths, and one of her training tasks had been to survive there for a month. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

By now, all that could be seen beneath was darkness, with the gloomy, clouded skies above and the soft pitter-patter of toxic, glowing, honeydrop mana rain. The other two had walked ahead, and typically, when they travelled like this, Bell would trail behind with Theora to help her out of sullen thoughts.

“Yeah, me too!” Dema shouted back. She casually turned around, then tripped over her feet and conjured some additional blood streams to stabilise herself just before falling down. “Whoops.”

“Be careful, Mom!”

“Why, not my fault! Bun Bun doesn’t talk a lot so we gotta pay full attention when she does.”

Isobel nodded, and the knock-knocks of her rock feet against the thin blood-crystal bar ceased when she stopped moving.

“I was just thinking out loud,” Theora admitted. “I feel bad for leaving her.”

Dema smiled. “Sounds like you got close?”

“Maybe,” Theora said. Then, she added, “She told me you fought together. So you got closer too?”

Dema nodded, walking backwards as she talked. “Yeah. Like. She’s such a cool person to fight along with.” She shrugged. “Y’know, she’s…”

Iso nodded as Dema trailed off. “When you have Bell around, you don’t have to worry. I can’t fight much as a [Mossmancer], but my old [Mage]-Class had some strong attack Skills. And when she’s around, you just don’t have to worry about anything.”

“Because she keeps you safe?” Theora asked.

Dema snorted. “More like she keeps everything else safe. Those three ex-heroes we fought back then were vicious. Like, one of them had blood powers too, but was using them to control other people. Another had sun powers. We fought for days, and their Support Class companion would just keep them going. I thought for sure we couldn’t win without a big mess.”

Isobel nodded. “I was really worried we’d let you return to a place of devastation.”

“But!” Dema let out, “Bell had me in good hands. She told me to go all out and she’d protect everything. And she did.” Dema smiled wide. “I broke the planet. But she had this… thing? Skill? [Redshift Mask] or something. Means she lets the damage happen and then shifts it back based on location? Didn’t really get it but it was woah!”

Isobel nodded. “Dema destroyed the planet and Bell shifted it back with her barrier, catching their opponents in the crossfire. It was… something else. There’s old books about the event, since everyone felt it. If you wanna read them one day.”

“And that’s how you won?” Theora asked.

Dema nodded and stepped onto the other side of the ravine, waiting for them to catch up. “Yep. Well, some other stuff happened — that redshift was not enough to win outright, but turned the tide. Needed a few other Skills to close it out and make them unable to continue the fight. That’s when you’d already succeeded with the mission and we’d already lost contact, though.”

“I see,” Theora said. That explained why they’d been hesitant to share with her what had been happening.

“Took us ages to find a usable piece of Bell though,” Isobel murmured. “Dema’s last attack turned her to mush. We searched for a month until we found an undamaged cell.”

“What?” Theora let out. “There was only one cell left of Bell?”

Dema nodded. “Yeah. First time she polyped. She was surprised she even survived. Not like all Medusae can just barrier off a specific cell when they realise they are about to kick the bucket.”

“She mentioned she polyped three times,” Theora said. “The second time was when she met the Singularity, then?”

“Yep,” Dema said. “System gave her a quest to kill it, so she wanted to check it out. She’d told her party not to fight before they found evidence of hostility, but the vanguard attacked anyway, and then… boom.”

“Boom,” Isobel echoed sadly, and hopped off the bridge as well.

“Bell went in-between, but the Singularity’s answer was too much,” Dema explained. “Her party realised they couldn’t win, so they scraped up Bell’s remains and the Singularity let them leave.”

“I feel even worse that we left her behind now,” Theora murmured.

Isobel showed a hint of remorse. “Just wanted to see the training grounds so bad…”

“We will have to make up for it when we get back,” Theora said.

Dema turned the blood bridge back into a liquid, letting it splash down the ravine. Isobel veered off to eat some moss that was surviving on a rock amidst the Rains of Fire.

Then, they made for the very last stretch of the journey: The Forbidden Lands — surrounded by a large wall of marble stone, artificially created to seal off the area. It was visible, to Theora, from far away, but still took another two days of travel to get close to.

“You said it’s close?” Iso asked. “But I still can’t see anything…”

“Me neither.” Dema kept her eyes open wide in search for the faintest hint. “They really went all out with these illusion skills, huh?”

“They wanted to make sure nobody accidentally found it,” Theora murmured. “I’m sure I’ve seen maps that feature this place though, over the years. So it wasn’t always successful. I imagine the illusion will break for you eventually.”

“So, how much longer?” Iso asked.

“Another ten minutes,” Theora said.

Dema perked up. “Wait, what? So close!” She looked over to Theora and took her hand. “Will be fine.”

Dema’s arm was strong, and pushed against hers until Theora was able to untense her muscles. Theora let out a breath.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and Dema squeezed her hand in response.

When they finally arrived, Theora tapped against the marble. It wasn’t that she knew how to open it — she just decided that an entrance was here, and the ancient spells keeping this place hidden from the world obliged.

Dema made a step back as the illusion broke. “Woah.”

Isobel let out a similar noise of awe as the wall split open to grant access.

“Do not touch anything,” Theora said as the parting walls revealed glimpses of permanent destruction, almost threatening to spill out. “Even for you, it might be deadly.”