Theora woke back up when her wounds had clotted and her body had replenished all the lost blood.

Summer heat bore down on the trash around her. Countless insects buzzed and explored, unfazed by the relentless light, the rot, and Theora’s subdued displeasure with having been murdered.

Sore back, sore chest. Normally, she would have avoided outcomes like this, but… No rocking the boat. Rocking the boat was bad, especially one minute after entering this new world. She wanted to see Dema’s favourite story play out, after all, to its final conclusion.

That’s right, where was Dema? They were separated again. The sky loomed above, way too bright, despite all the clouds.

She was here for a date with Dema, and to perhaps fetch a Fragment of Time. Finding just a single one of them would probably be fine; she might get a hint about whether this quest was awful or not. She could still choose to abandon it afterwards. So, she needed to find Dema, have a nice time with her, and somehow figure out whether a Fragment of Time can be extracted from this story.

Her chest still throbbed. Being stabbed wasn’t nice, and Theora wanted a hug. This felt really unfair. What had she done wrong? Dema said to be careful with one’s words, but so far, Theora had said nothing but the truth. Maybe this world rewarded lying? That would be awful.

With a sigh, she got up, and looked around for an exit from the garbage dump. Meeting back up with Dema only required Theora to find and follow the main plot line. She vaguely remembered having skimmed the first few pages… What had the protagonist done, after leaving the castle?

She wonkily stepped over the trash while trying to remember. When she reached the high wall encompassing the area, she smashed her fist right through it. It violently tore open, debris flying everywhere.

Theora stared at her bruised hand and the rubble and the settling dust, and realised that she was in a bit of a bad mood.

That’s right — she’d been killed for no good reason, just like that. It was upsetting. What if they’d done that to somebody else? It wasn’t that she cared they’d done it to her personally, it was the concept that they would do it to someone they’d just summoned. Sure, they’d asked if she was a bad person first, but not all bad people deserved this kind of fate. She could have literally been anyone, someone who didn’t deserve to die at all, and they would have still killed her.

It was upsetting.

Right. Upsetting. She remembered now.

The protagonist of the story had also been upset, hadn’t she? And then gone to drown her sorrows in orange juice in some nearby tavern. All Theora had to do was find that tavern, and meet Lostina.

She staggered through the hole into a narrow, upward bending alley. Her body still felt the consequences of death. She was too annoyed to force it in order. Long and wide steps led the way, with the buildings to the sides squished tightly together, and all consisted of the same white limestone based brickwork, just like the ground. Or, maybe it was light clay.

Theora couldn’t help but find the idea of living here somewhat cosy, since she preferred cramped spaces. Stepping up the slope led her through a few more alleys of the same type. Whenever the path split, she chose a branch to get her further up, hoping to either find an overview of the town or eventually hit upon a main road.

After a while, more and more steep angles revealed the castle she must have initially been summoned to; maybe they’d just thrown her body out of a window, since it was still quite high up. Finally, the path widened and brightened up. To her left — the direction of the castle — she saw an animal. And, upon further inspection, there were more of its kind too.

Beige-feathered and four-legged, with a long neck, and wings folded on its back, it didn’t quite look like anything Theora had seen before, but then again, this was a Fantasy story, so most of its world was totally made up.

As she turned into the alley, she found other animals of its kind in a row. The first creature had a long, black beak, with the colours and shapes of the others’ varying slightly, and it had small blue eyes, as well as a puff of long, white feathers on its head. It looked rather graceful, and was about as tall as her, even though it was sitting.

What confused Theora more than anything else about the sight was that a net of peculiar straps was draped around its head, neck, and torso, together with a contraption on its back between its wings that seemed like it would… Make it easier for a person to sit on it…?

Theora frowned.

In addition, there was a leash attached to the creature that wound back to the wooden, half open and segmented shed the animal was placed in. Each segment contained one of these peculiar birds. All of them had leashes on them.

They were imprisoned.

Theora had never seen anything like this before, and looked around in confusion. Had these animals done something bad? With a few paces, she closed the distance, though careful enough as to not upset the creature. It didn’t seem to mind, and just eyed her with curiosity. Eventually, Theora even patted its head.

Soft feathers. The bird whickered and puffed under the touch, craning its neck to get Theora to stroke different spots on its head.

“Aren’t you a cutie,” she murmured, smiling. The creature didn’t seem aggressive at all. After a moment, Theora produced some nuts from her layered cloak, wondering if such might be part of the creature’s diet, and, sure enough, it didn’t refuse to eat them.

On the other hand, the creature looked like it might be a predator, so then it would have to eat flesh, although it made no attempts to consume Theora.

She looked around the street for a while, until she found a man idly carrying a crate through a door.

“Hey!” Theora called for him.

He looked up. Strong beard, light complexion, bright eyes, but he was fairly old and his limbs seemed rather dainty for the weight he seemed to be lifting.

“Yes?” he croaked in a high voice, with a bit of an accent Theora was unfamiliar with. As his eyes landed on Theora, his eyes widened, and his chin dropped.

“Why are these creatures confined?”

He stared back, totally baffled. “What?”

“Tied up,” Theora specified. “Why are they tied up?”

He frowned deeply, lost for words. “... So they don’t fly away?”

“So they don’t fly away,” Theora echoed, to herself, in a soft voice.

She looked back at the contraptions on their backs. Of course, she’d heard of people using animals to do labour, it was rare, but it did happen. Typically, it wasn’t necessary, since people could use their skills and strength to do anything an animal could, so it felt rather excessive and cruel, but some people were just that way.

But wasn’t this a large city? In fact, wasn’t it the land’s main city?

And yet, nobody was stopping it…?

Theora sighed. Now, some of the apprehension that Dema, as well as Balinth and Hell had communicated upon the idea of Theora choosing this book to visit was starting to make sense.

First, she’d been executed, and now this. Clearly, this was some piece of dystopian fiction.

“Are they a danger to people?” Theora asked and the man, still confused, slowly shook his head.

“Not if you’re nice to them they aren’t,” he said.

“Alright,” Theora said, and snapped its leash in two with a gentle grip and a flick of her fingers. Then, she proceeded to do the same to all the others.

“W-what are you doing?” he asked, subduing a laugh. “They’re gonna throw you in jail! What happened to you anyway? Are you okay?”

Jail, Theora thought, exasperated. Clearly dystopian fiction. This was Dema’s favourite book?

Then again, Theora had broken Dema out of something that could be considered a prison, all those years ago, and was tasked to exert capital punishment on her. Of course, it had been deemed a last-ditch solution by the System, but perhaps Theora’s homeworld was rather a dystopian place for Dema to exist in. Maybe this book offered some kind of catharsis.

“If they want to stay, obviously, they can.”

When she’d finally snapped all the leashes, the creatures looked around a little disoriented. One of them took off. The others stayed around, stretching their limbs a bit, flapping their wings a few times, and striding up and down the street. They made no attempt to get away, though.

The man laughed. “I suppose the yard girl is doing a good job,” he mused. “Nice fella, that one. Always helpful.”

Theora nodded. “I’m glad to hear that,” she said. “Say, would you happen to know a tavern that’s close to the castle, and would be accessible to people who just arrived with low funding?” Maybe that would give her a good shot at finding Lostina. With the assumption that if this was a dystopia, they’d probably also still be making use of money even in larger settlements.

The man did provide her with some promising options and instructions on how to get there, and added that her appearance may not be appropriate. But what were they going to do? Kill her again? Theora was too tired to care.

She left the birds behind, and felt somewhat bad about it. They might get recaptured. And, if everyone in this place was just fine with this state of being, it meant that there were likely animals confined everywhere, and there was little Theora could do about it.

At least not without completely derailing whatever story this book was trying to tell.

She sighed, and decided to simply snap all the leashes on whichever animals she would find, even if that wasn’t a good solution at all. She couldn’t bear the thought of doing nothing either.

For now, she had to find the main character before she moved on to whatever plot event she had to attend next. People avoided Theora, which made traversing the streets a bit easier even in more populated areas.

After a while, she arrived at the third tavern. It was a large building made of the same limestone everything in this city was, but the edges were painted in green stripes. The entrance stood wide open, with a bunch of people sitting outside as well.

Theora scanned the place until her eyes landed on a young woman. She had bobbed black hair with two long strands on either side of her head reaching down to touch her shoulders, piercing, light-green eyes with dark sclera, and a little mole on the side of her chin. She was wearing a chocolate-coloured and elegant tight suit, not quite unlike what Theora had seen the Devil of Truth wear, all those years ago.

The woman seemed unhappy. Incredibly dour expression on her face, slumped over in a way that made her suit fold and stretch around her body, as she was drowning her sorrows in orange juice, just as expected.

This had to be Lostina.

Theora slowly strode between the tables, coming to a halt right in front of her.

It took a moment for Lostina to realise. She stared up blinking, her eyes first resting on Theora’s bloodied cloak, then her face. She blinked again. Finally, she shook her head, confused, but mostly exasperated.

“How the fuck are you still alive?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure I saw you die.”

“I got better,” Theora murmured, and sat down at the table.