The very next morning, Theora got up with a groggy head.

She wanted to go back to sleep. Oh, so badly. What would she give for another hundred years of sleep? Suddenly, it occurred to her that maybe, she should have savoured all of her sleep during the Devil’s quest a bit more. On the other hand, she’d been asleep due to stress and heavy feelings, so maybe expecting her to have savoured it was a bit much. But this was Future-Theora now, and Past-Theora had no way of defending herself.

So, Past-Theora should have savoured her sleep more, Theora decided, and weakly went on to put one foot after the next, doing her best to not fall right back asleep. Before she left the cosy little room filled with books and an almost human-sized statue of what seemed like a person with wildly unrealistically shaped hair and stylised face, Theora glanced over Dema’s snoring face.

They had ended up both sleeping on the ground, a little cramped, head by head, but bodies pointing in different directions. Theora was tall, so she hadn’t been able to stretch her legs out. Instead, she’d slept on the side, her legs pulled up towards her chest.

But that offered a new conundrum compared to sleeping on her back — should she lie facing Dema’s upside-down face of ashen and coal-coloured skin with amber lips and rough hair, or lie looking away? In the end, she hadn’t been able to decide, and just kept turning around.

And at one point during the night, Theora had been poked on her forehead by Dema’s horn.

She still felt the sparkles at that exact point on her skin.

It was slowly dawning on Theora that she was in big trouble.

She brewed herself a morning tea in the kitchen — it was really early, and while the sun had already risen, it was hidden behind a dense layer of clouds and fog and drizzly rain. Balinth was also awake, cradling Zeka to her chest, walking up and down the short hallway next to the kitchen because it left more space to walk than any other room in their small apartment.

“She can’t sleep,” Balinth explained, and Theora nodded. She vaguely remembered having held a sleepless child in that manner before, though it must have been a long time ago.

That thought somehow made her miss Iso. Would she ever get to hold Iso? Being a person made of rock, she’d be very heavy, but Theora was confident she could lift her and hold her safe. On the other hand, perhaps Iso would never want something like this. Iso didn’t even know her, after all.

Somehow, that stung.

“I don’t know when I’ll be home,” Theora eventually murmured after placing a cup of tea on a cupboard for Balinth and proceeding to make one for herself. “Please don’t wait for me, it might be late.”

Balinth nodded, stroking over Zeka’s hair. “Should we leave you some food for dinner? For when you come back? Or will you eat while out?”

Theora halted her efforts to put leaves into a sieve, and stared at Balinth. “I… I don’t need food. Please, don’t inconvenience yourselves.”

“You don’t need food,” Balinth repeated dryly.

Theora nodded. “I can will myself to stay conscious and functional despite hunger.”

“That really sounds like you do need food.”

A moment passed, and Theora already opened her mouth to object, but somehow, Balinth’s expression made clear that it wasn’t a question. She had her eyebrows slightly raised, one maybe a hint higher than the other, and pursed her lips.

It wasn't a question, it was a very gentle order. Theora swallowed.

How often did people give her orders? It was a rather peculiar feeling. Even as a child, when she’d still been a functional, non-broken human person, she’d always just done whatever she wanted, and the people around her hadn’t bothered to try and exert authority over her, perhaps because they knew it wouldn’t have worked.

Theora didn’t like the idea of authority. At the same time, she realised that this was a particularly vile and hypocritical thing for her to think, with how many lives she’d ended in her time in a complete and utter exertion of power over another person. She’d come to accept it in the manner of thinking that these beings, while not being a threat to her, had still threatened the very lives of countless innocent and uninvolved people, and she was aware of the fact that it wasn’t possible to extend peace to those who threatened it, but…

She took a deep breath. Overthinking again. Remember the rule.

Ah. Despite everything, Theora still tried her best to follow that rule, didn’t she? A rule that had absolutely no leverage behind it, one that Dema couldn’t uphold by force, just by virtue of forming the mere request and Theora obliging. And yet, Theora would never question it, only try to remember.

“Alright,” she murmured, with a soft sigh. “If you— if you want to, I’d be happy about receiving leftover food.” Theora gulped.

Maybe she would feel a little better about herself if she put something in her stomach for once. At that thought, piercing the layers of bitterness and ignoring all stings of apathy in her mind, she managed to muster the smallest amount of excitement at the prospect of receiving a home-made meal at the end of her upcoming day.

That little thing, and the fact that she’d see Dema again, made her look forward to coming back home.

And with that feeling softly bubbling in her chest, she got dressed for outside and left. She’d initially planned to go to one of the larger guard stations first and ask how she could help there, but after studying the map of Hallmark, she’d seen that one of the mana crystal veins was rather close-by, accessible through a tunnel in a small valley a few minutes’ walk downhill, so she wanted to check it out first-hand.

The entire town had a strong verticality to it, some houses’ entrances higher than the roofs of others, as the streets went up and down, meandering — except for the large main street cutting towards the heart of the large settlement, which had been kept level artificially. Likely to aid travelling carts.

Again, nobody was out on the street. The fog was still dense, which made finding the entry she was looking for a little harder than she’d hoped. She paced through the streets, the frills of her cloak dancing in the air behind her.

The rain was slowly seeping into her clothes and forming dropping beads on her face. Ah, to be a little betta fish swimming through fog-muddied water in an ocean of a town she had all for herself. She almost lost herself in that feeling until finally, she managed to find what she was looking for.

It was a small temple. Slanted green roofs, no door. One could just walk in. Two guards stood in front of it. A small woman in an iron armour, and a demon without protection, just wearing manifold warm clothing. Both sported the emblem of the city guard on their chest.

“Hello,” Theora started. “May I go in?”

The human woman frowned. “You’re a free person, I assume? Do what you want.” She was round and small and pale, with a hardened face littered with long-since healed over scars. Probably about forty years old, with glaring brown eyes.

“We’re not here to keep people out,” the demon added in an oily voice. From what Theora knew, demons were largely able to choose their own appearance. This one had bright and smooth crimson skin and black eyes, a small and thick build, though still a head taller than their colleague. Overall it seemed like they made a strong effort to not give off a strong gender expression one way or another, and Theora couldn’t help but feel that this person vaguely resembled a furless red panda. “Are you a traveller? I wouldn’t recommend going down there, the place is full of Afterthoughts.” The demon waved a hand in front of their chin and scrunched one side of their face, to show a hint of reluctance. “They can’t get out easily due to the architecture of the staircase, so this place isn’t cleared as often as the others. That means they are much stronger.”

“Alright,” Theora said, and went to move to the stairs inside the temple.

At that moment, she felt the woman grab onto her upper arm. It was a firm hold. “Rogue’s saying the ones down there are hella strong. You got that? Don’t come back out crying. What’s your Level?”

Theora double-checked her sheet.

Ah, that’s right. She was an uncorrupted [Stargazer] now, so she actually had a meaningful Level. It was alright to boast a little every now and then, right? To show off the fact that not all of her was broken, and that she had a precious and wonderful Class by now. It made her almost feel prideful to be able to answer honestly for once without alienating people with her glitched-out and broken self.

“One,” she said.

“You’re gonna fucking die. Don’t make me throw you to the ground.”

“Hey Magda,” Rogue said. “We aren’t here to keep people out. She’s been warned, so be it.”

Magda shot him a cold and angry glance. “So what, we just let her die on our watch?”

“Rest assured,” Theora voiced calmly, and gently peeled the stranger’s fingers off her arm. Then, she walked past the two, leaving them to stand behind. Immediately, they started whispering and even hissing at each other, and a few moments later, she heard steps following her down the stone stairs.

“We’re going to come with you,” Magda said. “And drag you out when you’ve got your winds knocked out.”