It took a very long time until Theora received that second day of vacation.

Or, more accurately, it took a long time until she accepted it. She understood what granting her a day off required of the guards; how it meant they’d have to put in a lot of extra work when they were already stretched way too thin. She could see the exhaustion in their eyes, just as much in the new recruits as in the old ones. It wasn’t something she took lightly.

But, recently things had started changing. Two weeks earlier, for the first time, a crystal had been cleared, and kept clear. The guards protecting it had not been overwhelmed. In the meantime, three more crystals had been cured in that same hall, and things were looking promising.

And thus, at Rogue’s behest, Theora had accepted a day off. And it wasn’t like Theora didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do on that day.

She woke up and peeled herself off her bed. Well, she called it a bed, but she was still sleeping on the ground in the guest room of Balinth’s and Hell’s home. She’d never had the time to move somewhere else, nor had anyone ever expressed a wish for her to leave.

Dema was already up, her blankets a mess on the ground. It was rare for her to get up first, and when Theora saw the sun’s elevation out the window, she realised that she’d slept in. She found Dema in the kitchen, preparing breakfast with a smile. Four plates. One each for Theora, Dema, Balinth and Hell.

“Gonna check if they’re awake?” Dema asked and Theora nodded.

Nobody was in their bedroom, but that wasn’t surprising. Lately, they’d been sleeping in the living room, on the sofa, because they kept passing out together while reading late. Thus, Theora found them in the living room. Hell was lying on top, a stone against Balinth’s figure, who still weakly held a book in hand. A blanket was draped over them, and from the way it looked, it must have been Dema who’d done it.

The two were wearing matching rings now. Back during the months when they’d planned the wedding, the town had been engulfed in strenuous mana fluctuations, so Theora hadn’t been able to attend.

Hell softly snored. Just as Theora wanted to leave the room, she saw Balinth’s eyes open up.

“Mornin’ Theora,” Balinth murmured. “Big day, huh?”

Theora nodded. “Out together with everyone,” she said. “To visit her.”

Balinth smiled groggily. She moved her white hair out of her eyes. “Glad you finally said yes. You deserve the time off, you know? Did a lot for all of us. Thank you.”

Theora bowed down awkwardly. “Just doing what I can. Even though it’s not enough.” She gulped, and quickly scuttled out of the room to avoid hearing an answer.

“Balinth woke up for a moment,” Theora said after getting back into the kitchen. “But I think they’ll sleep for a while longer.”

Dema nodded. “Just gonna let their food sit here then, they should be up soon anyway.”

She’d made sandwiches — full of green leaves, tomatoes, cucumber and other vegetables she’d gotten from the market the day before. Dema stared down at her own plate and that of Theora, and put her chin in her hand, sinking into thought. “I think we’re late,” she rasped. “She’s probably already waiting outside. Let’s eat while walking?”

“Sure,” Theora said, and gently took her food as Dema did the same. She took a bite, and oh, it was bliss. How could she have ever lived without Dema’s food? Sure, the girl had probably learned most of it from Hell and Balinth on their stay here, but this was the true pinnacle of existence. Theora had never cared about food much, but just the fact that Dema had gone through the effort of preparing it for her made her feel so at home.

And, as they left, it turned out Dema was right. At the bottom of the stairs, Zeka was waiting. Greying hair, waving up at them, looking rather similar to a younger Balinth. Same round figure, skin just a tad lighter. Her son stood next to her, a teenage boy whose face brightened up as he saw Dema emerge from the apartment.

“Hey!” he shouted up at them. “I found a merchant in town who trades citrine. You gotta take a look later!”

Dema jumped down. “What!” she said, mouth completely full of sandwich. “Should’a bwought one to show!”

“Didn’t have anything on me to trade!” he light-heartedly snapped back. Dema had somehow convinced him to become a geologist back when he was ten, and now he was attending a school in the north of town just for that.

“We’re late,” Zeka pointed out, and waved to Theora to ask her to come down as well. Theora obliged. “Rogue’s probably already waiting.”

“Could’a knocked!” Dema said after a big gulp. “Forgot the time. And little rabbit slept in. Didn’t wanna wake her, though.”

“You could have woken me,” Theora mumbled.

“Could have, yeah. But didn’t!” Dema sing-songed.

“Not waking up little rabbits when they have obligations is a form of animal cruelty,” Theora said.

“Oh, come on! This is your one day off. Would’a been cruelty to wake you, clearly.”

“Have to agree with Dema on that one,” Zeka added. “It’s all good. I didn’t knock because I didn’t want to wake my mothers. They’re probably still asleep, yeah?”

“Yeah!” Dema confirmed.

They started moving and the banter continued. A soft morning drizzle fell from parted clouds above, but nobody minded. Living in Hallmark made people resilient to this kind of weather. And, even though it was early, people were already out on the streets. It was a sight that always made Theora feel a little better about herself.

Eventually, they found Rogue waiting in front of another temple they were guarding; sneaking away for a moment for this endeavour had been deemed safe enough, especially because Theora had visited this place last in the previous day, to make sure it was as calm down there as possible.

Rogue was a demon, and demons didn’t age the same way humans did. They chose their own appearances, and while their lives weren’t as long as those of other long-lived peoples, it wasn’t possible to discern their age by sight. As such, Rogue was still the same red-panda-lookalike as when Theora had first met them — except now, they were clad in iron clothing instead of robes, and their hair had grown much longer.

Zeka hugged Rogue on arrival, and they left the temple behind.

“Sorry we’re late,” she said. “It’s Dema’s fault.”

“Hey!” Dema objected. “No it’s—” She hesitated for a moment. “Well yeah, kinda my fault. Sorry.”

Theora disagreed in thought. She shouldn’t have slept in.

“Not a problem,” Rogue said. “Doesn’t matter when I slip away, as long as I don’t stay away for too long.”

Zeka shrugged. “Still, earlier is better, right? Fewer people out. Less time for them down there to recover.”

Rogue just waved off. “Going to be fine.”

One side-alley after another, they made their way through town. Dema had gotten involved in an argument with Zeka’s son about whether or not mercury was a type of rock, where Dema argued that it wasn’t because liquids weren’t rocks, and the boy countered by saying that every rock would turn liquid with enough heat.

“Aren’t you rock-type?” he eventually said. “You should know!”

At that, Dema fell silent, glaring towards Theora. She thought for a moment, and then said, “Alright, sure. Gonna confirm that one. Hot enough and I’ll get we—”

“Hey!” Zeka chimed in at the last second, and Theora tried her best to not fill in what Dema had been about to say.

Rogue laughed. “Let the woman speak! Oh, actually. Theora, you wanted to gather some flowers, right? I think here’s a good place.” They nodded to a spot of greenery to their right.

Theora nodded back, having finished her sandwiches, and set out to look around the vegetation. Which ones should she pick?

A group of flowers caught her eye, perched next to a wall of a residential building. Long stems cluttered with white, star-shaped flowers with long stamen poking out of them. Theora recognised them as asphodel.

Then, she found a small patch of yellow small rues, and finished her small bouquet by adding bluebells.

“Done?” Zeka asked, and Theora nodded, holding the flowers in her hand in a way as to not make them stand out.

And then, after turning through a few more streets, they finally paced into the fenced-off area filled with trees and grass and rocks. The drizzle still fell, and since they had entered a valley of the town, a denser fog wrapped itself around them now. Step by step, Theora made it through the path, looking down and feeling her hair stuck against her skin as it soaked up more and more raindrops.

They came to a halt in front of Magda’s gravestone.

Large and made of iron, praising her efforts to help subdue the plague until she’d eventually retired.

Theora placed her bouquet of flowers down on the ground in front of it. The words the flowers murmured at her were likely in too low a voice for Magda to ever hear.

Three years earlier, she’d died of old age. The four decades Theora had spent in Hallmark were enough to wash that kind of damage over fragile human bodies.

They all stood there in silence for a while, then Zeka and Rogue started murmuring things at each other in low voices, Zeka’s son occasionally supplying. Dema said nothing throughout. She just stared down at the words on the stone, her throat softly bobbing every now and then.

Theora didn’t know what to do or say. She’d been here before, briefly, but never together with others, never like this. Magda’s face kept flashing in front of her mind, the wide grin, the occasional curse echoing from her memories, and the relentless dedication Magda had put into everything she’d ever done.

Rogue was the first to leave, after a while, to go back to his post. The minutes ticked by, and then, Zeka and her son left too, because he needed to get to school.

And thus, only Theora and Dema were left, surrounded by the fog of oblivion.

“Poof, gone. Just like that,” Dema mumbled. “Always poof, gone.” She sighed, and crouched down, letting her arms dangle over her knees. “I even memorised her face, you know?”

Theora knelt down next to her, placing a hand on Dema’s back.

“And now, I’ll never see that face again,” she continued. “Bummer. Even though it’s still stuck in my head. And I memorised the other faces too. It’s super hard, you know? To do that. I wonder if it was a mistake, because now, I might never forget.”

“You want to forget?”

Dema just shrugged. “Just because it hurts.” She wiped some tears out of her eyes, and eventually, stood back up. Theora looked up at her, the horn almost piercing the sky as Dema’s small figure loomed over. She took a deep breath. “I miss her.”

“Yeah,” Theora said.

“Also, didn’t really mean that,” she whispered, and bit her lip. “Still worth it, to remember, even if it hurts. Ain’t a mistake.”

“Yeah.”

“You gonna go now too, right? There was something you wanted to do?”

With a nod, Theora got up and turned towards the magitech guild. “Haven’t heard from Ulfine in a long time. I want to go check on her, now that I have the occasion. Heard she might come home. You’ll be busy too?”

Dema nodded. “Gonna clear some Afterthoughts in the north quarter. They requested my help.”

“Sixty percent?”

Dema smiled, and nodded. “Of course. Sixty percent. Not gonna let my mana fall lower than that. Can’t believe you’re still worried about it.”

Theora would always be worried about it.

Dema gave Theora a hug, and then bobbed off the graveyard. Theora watched her figure get smaller until it vanished in the mist.

Theora rubbed her eyes, and glanced back at the gravestone. A torrent of emptiness hit.

Poof, gone. Indeed.

How long until the day when Theora would witness the same with Dema? At the end of an ocean of time flowing by way too quickly, would she stand at a grave, and think, ‘poof, gone’?

She opened her quest menu.

[Fetch Quest: Find the Thirteen Fragments of Time.]

Time remaining: 201 years.

Almost fifty years had passed since she’d received this quest, and still, she had no idea what a Fragment of Time could be. And she already felt more exhausted than when she’d received the quest to subdue the Devil of Truth; only this time around, sleep was not an option.

She wiped her eyes and strode off the graveyard, feeling the soft drizzle dry in a cool breeze on her skin as she felt the frills dance behind her.

A little fish, swimming towards isolation.

And thus, she made her way to meet Ulfine. Or rather, to the magitech guild — she wasn’t sure whether Ulfine had already returned from her errand, it was mostly a rumour. After making about half the way, she stopped in front of another temple, seeing a long queue in front of it. Healers, infrastructure workers, maintenance workers and the like were waiting to be let in to safely replenish their mana with the aid of the guards, so that they may continue keeping the town alive.

Soon, those queues might not be needed anymore. Maybe not all had been in vain.

At that thought, Theora heard a few clicks and clacks behind her, and felt a weak presence approach. Weak, but well-defined.

“Hey,” a bright voice issued from it. “Finally found you. Are you the companion of the Ancient Evil?”

“Yes,” Theora answered without thinking, and turned around. When she laid eyes on who stood there, her heart skipped a beat.

It was a small person. Even a head smaller than Dema, but wider. Standing there, legs and arms stretched out, looking up at Theora with her head in a pose and expression that communicated pure curiosity.

Moss was growing on her body in large patches; mostly on her back, and some of it on her head, and additional spots on her limbs. Next to the lush green and her shale dark frame, glowing crimson red flowed through the cracks in her rock body.

A body that looked battered and broken, like a resurrected fossil, but housed a person full of life.

“Iso,” Theora blurted, and stared in awe.

The girl tilted her head and widened her eyes, all segments softly clattering against each other. She looked confused, but enticed. “Who’s Iso?”