To Hell with the Author, Chapter 7: Path to Ruin

In her efforts to defeat the Errata, Gonell will launch an attack of unimaginable strength. It gets deflected, and destroys a village. Blaming herself for the death of its inhabitants, this will set her off on her path to demise, eventually leading to her plot-demanded death seven months from now.

That means, essentially, that the residents of this little settlement don’t actually matter to the author at all. In the original story, this was simply a footnote in the periphery of a backstory. None of this was shown; it was implied — a mere detail explaining Gonell’s behaviour in her few on-screen appearances, and the author probably didn’t spend as much as five minutes on making it all up.

The only reason I know so much about the event at all is because I combed through the pages for anything related to Gonell, and pieced it together from scraps and implications. The exact location of the village, from a map the author provided at some point; the exact timing of the attack, which was alluded to in a later chapter when brought in reference with another event. As such, I happen to know these things, and at the very least the author was diligent enough not to litter the story with little inconsistencies and plot holes.

The first three villagers are easy to trick. I start with those Theora has already met, because once they arrived at Theora’s location, they would maybe trust her a little, and that trust might cascade to further arrivals that know them.

There are some annoying restraints with my Skills, as much good as they do me.

[Disguise] lets me change my looks in any way I please, but it’s hard to choose an appearance that looks exactly like someone else. There is [Mirror], which lets me copy the appearance of a person for about two minutes at current Level, which means I need to be quick while using it. I need to touch them first to acquire their shape, too.

And then, there is another concerning constraint.

Current Mana: 37/90

I can [Imitate] voices, which is helpful for screams… and I can [Obsess], which allows me to change into the shape of another person for up to an hour, but it’s 20 mana all at once.

It’s nearing evening, but the streets are still a bit busy. The rain picked up again. Theora’s coat keeps me warm and cosy and dry, except my head, but I can pull on the hood if I want to. Not that it really exists, but the coat is manifold and self-repairing, so if I drag out a piece of fabric from the folds, I can use it to cover my head.

And so, I make my way through the streets, finding easy, isolated victims for my ruse.

I need to keep my head clear, obviously. Trying to keep up with the numbers, I get a bit of a headache. How often can I still [Mirror]? How many people can I impersonate if I save one use of [Obsess]?

In addition, I recite in my head their names, trying not to forget the deep web of relations I’ve spun in my mind.

What is typically swept under the rug in spy movies is the importance of reliable data in undertakings like these. Instead, they put emphasis on clever improvisation, or just have the characters miraculously know everything without even explaining how they got the info.

For what I want to do, I need to actually know where people are, who they are in contact with and such, and ideally, I would need to know what they look like too.

This morning, in my attempts to find a way out of this mess, I broke into the mayor’s office and got a list of all inhabitants. Just names, though. I found a folder with documents about buildings at the local carpenter’s shop, which allows me to draw some connections between those names and the houses. Turns out that almost everyone whose work is related to maintaining this village has some sort of list that helps identify its residents.

I got caught four times, but I was covered in Skills, so just running off and disguising myself again turned out to be enough to handle that.

“Mom?” I call into the room, a little quiver in my voice, to make myself sound scared. I stored Raka’s appearance when I bumped into her earlier that day, and I gave my clothes a different appearance too. Amala rushes out, the knocks of her leg resounding between the platters of rain.

“Honey?” she asks as she sees me drenched, with a little bruise on my cheek I made up for dramatic effect.

“Something’s wrong,” I say, my voice high. “Var told me to come fetch you, the mayor apparently told us to evacuate. I don’t know what’s going on.”

I can see Amala’s knuckles whiten as they clench around her cane. “Goodness,” she says. “Are the shelters even still maintained?” With a few steps, she runs across the kitchen, and opens some cupboards. “I’ll fetch some food for everyone. Just in case.”

“I need to meet up with Var and warn the others,” I say.

“Sure, honey. Please be fast. I’ll meet you there.”

I give her a goodbye hug, and run off.

You lied successfully!

+700 EXP.

This sham isn’t going to hold for long. Once they meet back up and start talking to each other, they’ll notice things are off when their memories don’t match. It doesn’t matter — once an Erratum pops up in the distance, they’ll be glad they are inside, with or without their doubts. Hopefully, that is.

I change into Amala’s form, having acquired it from the hug, and let myself get helped across the street by a villager whose name I don’t know, storing his shape as well, and then I give some panicked shouts to get Auburn and Flint to leave, since I’m aware they know Amala.

“Y-yes,” I stammer. “Please go off without me, I need to find Raka.”

Auburn shakes his head, his damp hair floating around. “I’ll join you. You shouldn’t be alone.”

Fuck.

seconds remaining…

God, maybe this [Mirror] was a mistake.

“No, Auburn, take care of Flint, please.”

“I can make it just fine! You’re the one ta worry about!” the old man cried, and I need to suppress an annoyed grimace.

“Actually,” I say, “I’m not sure if the basements are still maintained. Maybe you should take some food with you. I don’t think anyone else will.”

Auburn stares at me for a few seconds, processing my words. “Fine,” he says, “But take care.”

You lied successfully!

+400 EXP.

My disguise already dwindles as I pace off into the rain, probably faster than Amala should have been able to, but the others are too occupied with following my suggestion.

God, that was close. If I’m outed as an impostor before they even get to the basement, things are going to get a whole lot harder.

My heart isn’t taking this well. Time to go to some other part of the village to reset. Oh god, I’m wobbly. As I reach one of the wells, my legs are shaking too much to continue. I was never very athletic, and now I’ve been travelling for days, and been up since early morning, scouring the village — but it’s fine; it’s fine, really, because on the plaza beneath me, I can see the residents network between themselves — hurrying around, sharing information, pointing to the shelters. I take a deep breath. The more of that they do, the less exposure I have due to mismatched memories.

Particularly, an old woman who I hadn’t seen before is coordinating a group going from house to house; based on her age, she may have been present in previous attacks.

I was right. All I need to do is cause some panic, and let everyone else take on the task of evacuating themselves. They know what to do.

Earlier, Amala immediately thought of getting food. Was that a reflex forged through her past experiences? I blink, and try not to think about it too hard.

My fallback plan was to ask Theora to turn some buildings into flour just to make the situation seem dire, although it might be more confusing than anything. I wish she could just blow stuff up. On that note, Dema would have likely been able to cause a lot of terror with her blood rains. Shame she didn’t stick around. But she’s right; it’s better if Gonell isn’t alone.

I force myself back up, teetering down a stone stairway. The streets are thinning out. As I make my way across a little bridge connecting two smaller plateaus of the cliff, my eyes flicker over the horizon, to the location of the two rifts.

I just need one Erratum to emerge early. Just one. Far away, that’s enough. Then, nothing can happen anymore.

“Hey there,” someone says, approaching me. Don’t know them. I can barely focus. “We are told to evacuate. Can you walk? You seem exhausted.”

I nod. “Yes. Yes. Just, go. I’ll come soon.”

I look at his face. Pale pink, short, blonde hair. He looks like a kid.

“Shelter,” I say, and my voice comes out harsh. “Go now.”

He nods, and after deliberating for a moment, he decides to leave me behind. Good.

I keep looking into windows, keep glancing into the distance, trying to make out if anyone is being forgotten. And, whenever I see an entrance to a shelter, I stare for a while, worried.

But people only enter. Nobody comes out. No matter how long I stare, nobody comes out.

Once she understood what I was trying to do, Theora really wasn’t happy with it. She tried arguing with me; bargaining. She was fighting with herself too, internally. It was obvious in her bright grey eyes. But I told her the most important thing is to keep them safe. If she fought the author or tried to mess with things, the author could always just scrap a few chapter drafts from their backlog and start over.

Or decide to randomly have the cliff collapse while everyone’s inside. Truth be told, we aren’t safe from that fate yet.

And then, Theora was just sad. Hasn’t looked me in the eyes since; but I imagine it’s because she thinks she failed.

But now, nobody is coming out of these shelters. Either these people are incredibly disciplined, or Theora is doing a very good job. I wonder how she’s doing it, in that case. She doesn’t seem like the type to force people to do stuff. Is she crying and begging for them to stay? Or do people just believe her, when she gently recommends to stay inside, with an empty gaze and a calm voice?

Or maybe they just know to stay.

I take such a deep breath I think my lungs might burst. My heart is pounding like there’s no tomorrow.

Well, maybe there isn’t one.

In the end, this whole plan rests on the assumption that the shelters will actually be safe from Gonell’s deflected attack. Convincing them to leave the village entirely seemed much harder when the shelters were right there, and also, I couldn’t let them be seen. The shelters are right next to where the destruction, the fire, and the ash will be, so nobody will leave once shit actually goes down.

In any case… On to phase two. Most people are gone, and I still have a while before the attack.

Time to break into every single home, and ransack the places.

The first one is a little one-story building, cosy enough, small, squeezed between two bigger ones, with a nice garden, and a door left unlocked. I run inside, and fetch whatever I can. There’s a drawer containing dozens of letters. There’s some frame on a cupboard, with a picture of two old people. A handmade mug.

Whatever I can find that’s easy to take, I just stuff it into Theora’s coat and move on. I want to visit each home anyway, to make sure nobody is left behind, or too stubborn to go. Theora’s coat is useful, because even for the few houses that are locked, I don’t have to worry too much about cutting myself into tiny pieces if I jump through a window. It offers some decent protection with how thick and layered it is. And it smells like her too. Of hay, and spring flowers, and sun-dried clothing.

A cosy blanket, hand-crocheted. A book on someone’s night stand. Colourful dresses hanging neatly in a cabinet. I’m sorry if Theora’s cloak ends up putting folds in them, but I don’t really have time to put in a lot of care. This is risky — if I’m seen stealing from places, everyone might end up thinking I pulled this all off for a heist…

But today, these people will lose everything — except their lives, if we are lucky. The very least I can do is attempt to offer the tiniest bit of solace. Even if only one item I fetch today ends up being important to someone, it’s probably worth it.

As the sun slowly sets, I finally see the first Erratum in the distance. A little speck against the clouded sky.

“There,” I say, pointing up, holding a little girl in my arm who I found disoriented in a house on the edge of the city, after she came home from playing in the meadows. “You see that?”

She nods, terrified.

“You know what that is?” I ask.

She nods again.

“Good,” I say, plopping her down close to a shelter entrance. “Go hide. Tell everyone.”

Watching her disappear, I take a deep breath. I look back.

It’s not just one Erratum anymore, it’s dozens now.

And there is Gonell — a tiny dot of red, flying right beside them. One after the other, they break apart, their remains crumbling down the sky. Dema is helping, from what I can see. She fights with blood, mostly. It’s hard to make out, but I think she’s making it rain red up there. And it’s melting the Errata apart.

But there are too many. Their numbers increase. Some of them are extremely strong. Gonell is being pushed back. She’s taking hits, because of course she is — in order to pose a threat to her, this needed to be an S-Rank rift, the highest there was, and I had caused there to be two.

I flinch as I see Dema cut into pieces by Errata. Her leg, then her arm, fall down; then she’s cut in two across her waist. But somehow, she soars back up on a pillar soon after. What the hell?

They try their best, but this is one of the biggest challenges the world has to offer. The only way out is Gonell’s strongest attack, amplified by her strongest state of mind, and right now, she’s likely doing her best to activate the conditions.

I was worried at first; Gonell functions best when alone, when she doesn’t have to worry about others, so I figured having Dema there might make things harder. But if Dema can survive being cut into pieces, then her presence might actually help Gonell out.

I look around, but see nobody left outside. I’m done combing through houses, and it’s getting dicey, so I climb a little shed hugging the cliff, and peer down into the empty streets.

And then, it flashes, in the corner of my eye. A short, blinking, golden light. Not even a second long.

[Ray of Annihilation].

But nothing happens inside the cloud of Errata. Instead, the beam drops right into the settlement below me. The flashes repeat across the centre of the village.

For a moment, everything is silent. An illusion created by the spell. A last moment of tranquillity before…

The world explodes.

Earth and wood and trees and debris rise into the sky in a massive burst of fire, half the village razed into a plume of smoke and flames. The other half is buried in the fallout. It happens within a second or so, and I just stand there, overseeing it from upper ground, until the shockwave hits me too, and knocks me away.

My ears pop, I’m thrown into what I can only assume to be some brushwork, and hit my head on something. Rocks and wooden planks and glass all whirl around me, some of them get caught in Theora’s coat, some even push through and tear into my skin, but none fatally.

I don’t know how long I lie there. Could be a minute, could be an hour. I can hear the fires blaze away, taste the smoke in my throat.

Obviously, I should have died. But there is still something the author needs me to do. I imagine it’s the deadly fumes, the flames and debris crumbling above me that are getting error messages right now.

I slowly weasel myself out of the rubble, on wonky steps, my entire field of view orange and grey from fire and ash. I stumble over the remains of the village, onward to the nearest shelter. My stomach is buzzing with anxiety of what might await me there. I’m stunned, my hearing is bad, I’m dizzy, and I just take step after step, on autopilot.

I knock against the stone door, and it takes only seconds for me to be fetched inside by strong arms, and the door being closed behind me. The interior isn’t as dark as I’d assumed — people have gas lamps, some have light-producing Class Skills.

“Oh, gosh, you look awful,” I hear someone say.

Someone else tries to lead me towards a bed bunk, but I veer off at the last second.

“How many,” I ask, feebly.

“How many what?”

I see Auburn’s face come into my view, but my vision is too bleary to make out much else.

“How many dead? How many hurt?”

I hear murmurs. Someone talks into a little contraption at the wall, leading to some kind of tube. A messaging system? There are stairs leading further into the cliff; I assume there are several layered shelters, connected to each other by intricate tunnels.

They take inventory, it appears, count heads. I can’t follow most of it. It takes a while, but my brain feels like it’s swirling in my head, so it’s hard to tell how long.

Eventually, I’m given a final number.

Hearing it makes me shudder. I want to fucking cry.

“I need to go,” I splutter. “Still things left to do.” Still one loose thread to tie.

Some people try to talk me out of it, but I ignore them. Flint shouts something rude in the distance somewhere. I tell them nobody can leave until the fires stop, and they call me a hypocrite. Right before I leave, someone drenches me head to toe in water, and I exit the basement and stumble through the flames.

Shortly after, someone else joins me. A wave of flowery hay-scent hits, as it always does when she’s around, piercing the smell of rubble and flames. She holds me up, somehow pushes debris out of the way no-one should be able to lift. Doesn’t care about the fire, touches glowing iron to bend it away from me. Protects me from crumbling buildings, but doesn’t say a single word.

Silently, we pave our way through the end of this little world.

And arrive at the entrance we entered through a day earlier. There, I sit down, and wait.

It’s dark by now — I can feel the drizzle again, now that I’m outside the heat. Theora seems to be talking to something, but I don’t know what it is.

At some point in the night, no more Errata in the sky, I hear the rumbles of an approaching rhino. Gonell stumbles into view from behind a treeline; she tries to fly, but can’t — after jumping up and hovering for a few metres, she falls down again, picks herself back up, and makes further ahead on foot. Blood vines from further away try to stabilise her, but Dema can’t fully keep up.

Gonell’s gaze is glued in pure horror at the flames behind me.

I rise, and start walking. As she sees us, there is a flicker of hope. Her eyes dart back to the flames, scanning them, until she gives up and stares at me.

She opens her mouth to speak, her voice immediately cracking at the words, “What have I done?”

Almost reached her. Almost there.

“I killed them all,” she mutters.

No, I want to say. I take a step forward, albeit a weak one. ERROR.

They got out, I want to say, hearing the crack of a rock under my shoes. ERROR.

They are up in that cliff in shelters, waiting for the fire to die down, I want to say, and stumble a bit further.

ERROR.

Action restricted. Cannot deviate from original author outline.

I can’t say anything.

The angry messages cloud the air, red in red, floating with threatening oppressive silence that only I can see.

You didn’t kill them all. You want to know the truth?

Every single one of them is safe.

But I can’t. An error lashes out at me, and I flinch. By now, Gonell’s face is wedged between prompts in crimson, staring at me like from a hole in a wall.

The fate of the residents was never the point. In the overall plot, they do not matter. The outline’s sole true demand is for Gonell to veer onto her path to ruin.

I try to wipe a tear out of my eye, but my fingers come away wet with blood.

“I’m sorry,” I violently force out, voice shaking. “Nobody else survived.”

Her eyes flicker dead, and I can feel something break inside.

You lied successfully.

+50,000 EXP.