Chapter 212: Anticipation

A squirrel’s busywork woke Theora at night. For a while, she watched it bury a hazelnut, her mind still foggy from sleep. These little critters stored them away for safekeeping, didn’t they? To find later and gorge themselves on them. And the ones they lost track of would grow into trees. Small sweethearts like this one could thus slowly help a forest recover from disaster, like being razed with no regard.

But… the squirrels did need a little bit of support, to start out. A foundation. Because without hazelnuts in the first place, there was nothing for them to find and plant. There was something sad about it too — a lot of the nuts and seeds the squirrel buried, it would never see again. While these efforts helped the forest grow, they would vanish from its memory.

The thought hurt. Theora didn’t want to forget. Treeka’s old home may be gone, but perhaps there was yet a chance to save its likeness. And so, she reached into her interdimensional travelling coat, and pulled out her deck of cards. Before she could take her first look at it, a sigh escaped her, and she rubbed a batch of sleep sand from her eyes.

The squirrel was still scratching at the ground, gilded by rimlight from one of the moons above, causing the only noise in the otherwise silent night. The minutes ticked by slowly, as if hesitant to pass.

When Theora woke from another short daydream, she was looking down at a fanned hand of cards. Unlucky. She’d already searched the deck three times… that she remembered. Carefully, she flipped through again. All she needed was an empty card. It’s not like she was missing them; they just didn’t show up in every shuffle, and the more she used the deck, the rarer they became. 

And so, she shuffled and shuffled, and searched and frowned. Minutes or hours passed. Another sigh. 

“What are you doing?” a voice interrupted her from behind, and Theora turned to greet Omi. Behind them, Treeka and Log were still resting. Theora had agreed to escort the return to their home world. 

Because Fentanyle had been banished to Hell. 

When the protective bubble of the Campanella had worn off, her struggle against Dema, and more fundamentally, her very existence on Himaeya had threatened to cause issues with the tidal flow of the planet. After putting her into a chokehold, Dema had said, “She’s gotta exhaust herself a little more at the restraints. When she gives up, I’ll let her out.”

She never really gave up, and regardless, Omi and Fentanyle would need some distance before they could go back to living together, if they both would ever choose to do so again. So, Fentanyle was, through a process Theora didn’t fully understand, dematerialised with the help of a [Priest], and transported to the hot and molten core of the planet — the place where Dema was born. 

Apparently, this was ‘fine’, and would not cause further issues with someone of Fentanyle’s abilities and strength. Theora did not question it because she had other things to worry about.

“With those cards,” Omi specified. “Whatcha doing with them?”

Theora showed her the current hand. “I remembered what this is when I woke up.”  She smiled proudly. “Haven’t used it in centuries. It’s a deck of memorabilia. I want to put a place inside that was lost.” She scrunched up her face. “Which one was it again…?” Right. The place with the limestone. “I just have to find an empty card, but…”

“Having difficulty?” Omi asked, sleep-drunk, and Theora nodded in response, also sleep-drunk. “What happens if you find an empty one?”

“It gets filled.”

“Huh…” Omi scratched her head, then sat down next to Theora. “I’ve heard you playing with them for a while. Maybe time to go back to bed?”

“I’m not playing,” Theora answered. “And it’s fine. I can find an empty card.” She shuffled the deck again. The squirrel had already moved on. 

“You said we’ll arrive at your training grounds tomorrow, right?”

Theora nodded. “And then it will take a few days for us to reach the door.” It was an easier way back than through the Observatory, which required them accessing Lostina’s homeworld first, and then getting help from a [Summoner]. The major downside was that they’d have to traverse that terrible area again.

That said, the train occupants who were returning to their homeworlds had all decided to take the route through the Observatory, meaning it would take a while for everyone to get home. And… Theora herself was banned from the place anyway, due to having accidentally broken part of it two-hundred years before. With Omi’s history, she would need some powerful protection for a while, until her surroundings stabilised, so they had to choose a path Theora could walk with her. 

That said, they’d only go there for a while. Omiaradne needed some of her items from home, and they had a few tasks to finish up in that Reality. While they were at it, Theora could fetch another Fragment of Time too. It worked out very well like that, and so she swallowed her reluctance to visit her training grounds again so soon after the last time. 

“How are you feeling?” Theora asked. She looked up for a moment to find Omi’s gaze.

The response was a simple but heavy shrug. A few moments passed before she said anything. “I’m glad some people decided to stay back here in this world. It means I’ll get to meet them again after we go and fetch our stuff from our place.” She gave a weary but earnest smile. “We were on that train for quite a while, and I get attached quickly. But my heart kind of hurts so it’s difficult to think, lately.”

Theora nodded. The cards were feeling warm by now, resisting heavy use due to their enchantments, but still thick and coarse to the touch. “I get how it feels,” she responded. “Getting attached quickly, not wanting to lose people.” She’d already decided what to do until the Frame of the Lost would unseal those waiting for her. Back when Dema showed her the picture, she figured ninety years would pass quickly, but in the thirty years since, so much had happened. This was likely about to change. With the SCISSoRs, fetching the remaining Fragments was as easy as getting to different worlds. Plus, because of the Campanella, there was ample reason to visit these other worlds now. 

Theora wouldn’t put Time back together before her friends returned, because this was a quest from the  System. Time, whatever it was, could turn out to be a calamity, and even if it — she — wasn’t, there was still a chance that the act would play into the System’s hand somehow, aiding in a plot for Dema’s demise. What made this line of thought difficult to fully accept, though, was the fact that the System also gave plenty of benevolent quests all the time. Time could simply be a prisoner who needed rescuing, just like Dema. 

Either way, having powerful and supportive allies like Gonell present for the occasion would probably help. Ulfine, who had dedicated her life to researching these artefacts, was in the Frame as well. Seeing the new ones Theora had collected in the meantime might give her new insights too. 

Sixty years really weren’t that long a time. Theora had slept that long before, on several occasions… And yet, the fact that she was so excited about the future for once somehow made time slow down. 

“I still can’t believe the staffers agreed to this plan,” Omi murmured out of the blue, her antennae twitching. She reached toward their travel luggage and pulled out a little scroll. As she unfurled it, the paper revealed a list of seven worlds. Before leaving the Campanella, Bell had retrieved its travel logs. 

“These are just yours, right?” Omi asked, and Theora gave a nod in response. “The places assigned for you to help restore?”

There were two steps needed to make amends for what had happened on the Campanella — for one, to incapacitate the means by which the destruction had been wrought. Thus, Theora had decommissioned the train. But the second step was of equal importance: to aid in the efforts of restoration. Treeka and Theora would travel realities for decades to that very end. 

“Why wouldn’t they agree,” Theora murmured in response. “It’s not like they have anything else to do now. The train was their life, and I took it from them.”

“Why are you already up?” Poxie whispered, approaching them from the grass on the other side of the camp.

Omi jumped up. “Oh, Poxie! Where were you?”

“Nightly walk. I figured you’d all be asleep anyway.”

“Can’t sleep,” Omi answered with a shy expression. “Too many thoughts in my head. And Theora was trying to fix something with her deck.” She turned around. “Right?”

Theora looked down at the stack, now laying half-abandoned in the grass. “Yeah, but I think I’m not finding an empty card anyway. Oh well.” She was too embarrassed to admit that she no longer even remembered what she wanted to do with it, now that she was more awake. She went on to collect the cards back together. 

Omi knelt down beside her and watched, until she started. “Oh, that looks kinda like a big Treeka, huh?”

Theora followed her gaze to a random card. She picked it up. Huh… curious. It really did. “It’s Treeka’s home forest.”

“Oh that’s so cool that you have a card of that!”

“Yeah,” Theora hummed, nodding. “I had no idea.”