Dema was looking at Theora with big puppy eyes. “She ran off!” she repeated, now for about the fifth time, and Theora had run out of things to say.

Yes, their daughter had run off. Immediately. Hadn’t even looked at them.

“After I went through all the effort of reviving her!” Dema whined.

Theora raised a hand placatingly. “Hey, she doesn’t owe you for that, right? You did it on your own free will on someone who couldn’t say yes or no.”

“I know!” Dema cried. “I know, I know.” She seemed to halt, but then said, “But! Even though I know, it still feels bad! I want her back! I didn’t even get to cuddle her! Am I not supposed to, like, hold her in my arms at least once?”

Dema seemed like she was close to crying. Her lips wobbled and she’d slumped to the ground, just two steps away from where Theora was sitting. Her eyes were getting puffy. “Also, what if something happens to her! She’s just a baby!”

“That’s… We don’t really know that,” Theora replied.

“She’s millions of years old!” Dema rasped, as if that proved her point. “Did they even have languages back then? What if she was just walking around all day, eating? And now she’s in this scary big world.”

Theora couldn’t follow along with the conversation anymore.

“And, like,” Dema continued, “Sure, she’s immortal, but what if someone finds her and grinds her into the finest dust? She doesn’t have any regeneration Skills!”

“That would be a problem,” Theora said. “We wouldn’t be able to reconstruct her if she was ground into the finest dust. But why would anyone do that?”

“Why, what do I know! People do stuff for the most ridiculous reasons. What if they think Iso-dust is pretty?”

“Isopod dust? I haven’t heard of that before.”

Dema shook her head wildly. “What are you on about, little rabbit? Who said anything about isopod dust?”

Theora frowned. “Didn’t you just… What?”

“Oh!” Dema rolled her eyes. “Damn, no! I meant ‘Iso’, as in, her name! That’s what I decided to call her.”

“Iso,” Theora repeated. “Short for… Isopod, then?”

“Dang, would you stop it with the ‘isopod’ stuff?” Dema complained. “It’s short for Isobel.”

“Alright,” Theora intoned. For the first time, she thought Dema might be a bit of a brat.

That said, another look told her that Dema was a very, very sad brat on the verge of a breakdown. She was shaking and shivering, even though she tried to conceal it. Her voice was uneven — still her usual deep raspy tone, but with a hint of a lump in her throat. And her eyes were by now obviously filling with tears, although none made their way out yet.

In a very uncharacteristic way, Dema actually seemed desperate. And yet, despite it all, she gave her best efforts to hold herself together. To steel herself, and to not show it.

And so, Dema sighed. “Gah, oh well. Can’t all go to plan. That’s what scheming’s all about, I guess. I just hope she’s fine. Should we, like… go after her?”

“She left on her own free will,” Theora said. “Not sure if we should go after someone who left us.”

“But!”

“Also, can we even track her? I have an Orb of Seven Wishes, so one of us could go after her, but the ocean is hard to search. We wouldn’t be able to breathe. More importantly, we wouldn’t be able to talk to her underwater.”

Dema hummed shakily. “Once she comes into my [Appraise] range, I can find her,” she mused, biting her lip. “But it ain’t gonna be easy. [Immortality] isn’t as convenient as to tell me where she is. Big bummer…”

“Alright. How about we leave her a bit of space, and then come look for her in a while?”

Dema slumped her shoulders. She just looked broken. Theora couldn’t watch this. She really, really wanted to hug Dema. Hug all her sadness away, cuddle her tight, until she was bright and cheery and smiling again.

But…

Theora took a deep breath. Actually, wasn’t it fine? In one reality, Dema wanted to be friends with her, and in another, Dema hated her and acted like they were on good terms. But wouldn’t that hug work in both of these versions of the world? Was it wrong to give in to the act, if it was one?

“Dema?” Theora asked, and held out both her hands weakly, trying to offer a hug, despite herself. Open hands, slightly stretched forward, as if to say, ‘Come here, if you want to.’

Dema’s eyes widened, then she scrunched them up, and just let herself fall right into the embrace. She crashed into Theora, and Theora caught her, holding her firm, wrapping her arms around that little body of hers.

And then Dema started crying. Sniffling and sobbing, grasping at Theora’s cloak to reciprocate the hug.

Theora’s heart broke. Dema had been able to hold herself together, but now, Theora had even managed to make the girl cry for real. That was, in a way, exactly the opposite of what she had hoped to achieve. After all, she wanted Dema to cheer up… Maybe such a thing was impossible for Theora to do after all. She just ended up gently stroking Dema’s back, as faintly as she could, as if worried that she could harm that scrawny and thin little body.

“How long’s that gonna be?” Dema asked. “Leaving her alone. How long ’til we can go to her?”

Theora wondered. What kind of timeframe was reasonable to give a daughter that had run away? How long should they wait until they could try to get to know her again? If someone wanted space, they needed to be given space.

“Maybe fifty years?” she mused, and was totally guessing. It seemed rather short a timeframe, but Dema was pretty sad after all, so Theora shaved off a few centuries.

On the other hand, what was even their plan now? There was the side quest concerning the Fragments of Time, but Theora had never heard of those before. She hoped that some scholars in that large city of Hallmark would know them — even just a definition of what they were and where to possibly find them could already prove extremely helpful.

Theora had a certain resource in the back of her mind; something that may allow her to find the Fragments regardless of where or what they were, but she wasn’t yet ready to pull on that. And, more importantly, she didn’t know if she wanted Dema to see it. As such, the hope was simply that Hallmark would deliver the solutions needed to find the Fragments within the necessary time limit.

In addition, they did have another Orb of Seven Wishes. The wishes granted by the orb were Death, Life, Breathing Underwater, Flight, as well as three more.

One of the remaining ones was the Finding wish, allowing one to learn the route to whatever entity one named. Theora hadn’t even considered using that for a Fragment of Time yet, because in her broken mind, the Orb was still untouchable as a last resort, for after fulfilling her Main Quest. Truth be told, though, that cognition was rather outdated.

So, option one was to use the Orb to try and find a Fragment.

Or, option two, they could use the Orb to try and locate Isobel. The problem with that was, of course, that Isobel had gone into the ocean, so being able to breathe underwater would be rather helpful in any attempt of meeting her, especially if they wanted to actually talk anything out.

Thus, the third option of what to use the Orb on was underwater breathing.

Which of these uses should they prioritise? Which of them was the most important?

“Dema,” Theora started, stroking her back gently. “All this with Isobel, it really affects you, right? That’s what makes you sad?”

“Yeah,” Dema sniffled. “It really kinda well damn does! I don’t even know why, it’s not like I get all mopey normally. No clue. Maybe the hormones.”

Theora didn’t understand what hormones had to do with this, or if demons even possessed any, so she assumed it was another pregnancy joke.

Dema didn’t normally get that mopey. Theora could absolutely imagine a situation where Isobel had run away, and Dema would have laughed it off, or jumped right after, or just mock-sulked.

Instead, here Dema was, having a complete breakdown on a proportion Theora had never seen before. Why?

Dema had gotten badly hurt on Theora’s command, and then spent 17 years in agony. She’d repeatedly said she didn’t really mind, and also hinted at the fact that she actually enjoyed it, but that was rather hard to believe.

Instead, maybe Dema had actually simply endured the pain because she’d seen how much experience she was gaining from being almost dead. Maybe every few days, she’d received another Level-up, bringing her closer to her goal of unlocking the next stage of [Immortality]. Perhaps that had been the only reason why she’d been able to persevere through all of this.

That could have been why she’d asked for death caps. Simply to gain more experience.

And then, after going through all of that, after living through death for so long, she’d finally received her reward, and went on to search for months to finally see its fruits, and to finally… Finally what?

Not be stuck alone with Theora any more? Was that why she’d put so much emphasis on finding new travelling companions?

Theora didn’t want to assume such negative things about Dema. It was unfair. But still, wasn’t that the only solution? Instead of carrying these brooding thoughts with her, she decided to just ask.

“Dema, are you getting tired of me? Are you sad that Iso is gone because of that?”

“What!” Dema actually sounded offended. “No way! How’d you come to that conclusion, damn it! Don’t forget the rule, little rabbit, or I’m gonna get angry.”

As Theora’s mind was racing into another fit of self-hatred, she suddenly felt two cold hands grasp her cheeks, as Dema pulled away slightly from the hug to look at her face.

“Not ever gonna get tired of you! In fact, if you think about it, ain’t it the opposite? Why’d I wanna get a daughter with you if I wanted to split! I kinda wanna stay with you forever.”

Ah. Wait, what? Theora gulped. She managed to contain the emotional impact of these words in favour of her brain going off in a logical firework.

Because, actually.

Actually, wait. Wait, wait, wait.

Something that maybe should have occurred to her much sooner.

She’d managed to get herself distracted. This was an upgrade to Dema’s [Immortality].

And Legendary Skills always only fulfilled one wish. All this nonsense about Dema using the Skill to do more than one thing, Theora had really gone way off the mark with that.

No, [Immortality] would only ever serve in furthering Dema’s goal of living forever. Reviving a fossil? That was a good goal, but it couldn’t have possibly been added on top of an already immensely powerful Legendary Skill that did something completely different.

No, this was a scheme. This was part of Dema’s grand machinations, her pursuit of neverending life.

She had extended her [Immortality] to another being. Because an upgrade like making her immune to Theora’s scroll would have been pointless. Theora didn’t really need the scroll to kill Dema, she could probably end her some other way, if she really wanted to.

But now, because of that upgrade, killing Dema also meant killing Isobel. And Theora would never kill Isobel, who was just completely innocent.

As these thoughts came to her, Theora couldn’t help but smile. She just couldn’t help it. What an amazing scheme. What a terrifying person she was sitting in front of. So it was true — Dema had still been scheming this entire time. And she’d found a perfect upgrade to [Immortality].

One that would make Theora’s Main Quest a whole lot harder. In fact, impossible to fulfil.

Oh, that was beautiful.