little help

Chapter 189: The Source of Division

First Day 08:17, Carriage Four, Lounge

Something strange was afoot on this train.

Theora couldn’t quite shake off that feeling. A lot of little things just didn’t add up… Why, for one, did they have to ‘buy’ tickets? It didn’t quite make sense. Especially considering—

“Yeah, using it on me would be a bit of a waste,” Treeka said with a somewhat bitter tone that tore Theora out of her thoughts.

She’d been spacing out again, it seemed. They w...

Chapter 188: The Campanella

New arc!! I'm really excited for this, I won't lie. I've been working on this for quite a while and I'm looking forward to sharing it ><

I really would like tell you all the tagline of the arc — I often have taglines, like the "Bigger Fish Arc" for the one with the big devourer, or "Reality Arc" for the one where they got isekai'd into modern earth. Sadly, revealing these taglines often sort of spoilers parts of the arc, so I need to keep quiet for now despite my exc...

2024-12-27 16:38:10 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 187: Interlude: Old Soil, Old Plants

CN: Mention of Injury

We live in a world of magic where many things are possible. For example, it is possible that one day your friends decide to chop you down in one fell swoop.

Half of me falls to the ground, twigs and branches breaking on impact like fingers. It is something I have learned: To make people care, you have to pretend to be like them. The other half of me remains stuck in the ground to decay over time like an abandoned body ...

Chapter 186: Chopping Time

Hi!

Updates have been a little slow lately — partly due to irl factors (e.g. I'm moving soon, hopefully, and apart from that I find myself swamped in paperwork due to some recent personal changes).

But also because I have been prepping the next big arc. It's a pretty exciting storyline to work on but it admittedly takes some time to get right. I appreciate any patience you can muster..! It will start after the next chapter~

Enjoy reading 🩷...

2024-11-29 17:10:56 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 185: News

“What’s up?” Dema asked as she approached, then came to a halt when she saw what lay before Theora’s crossed legs. “What the— Is that…” She swallowed. “A Fragment of Time! Where’d you get that?”

Theora opened her mouth to respond but her first words got stuck in her throat. The hall may have been filling with air slowly, but her brain was still only just waking up. Confused, she tilted her head. “Wait, how do you know that?”

Dema stared for a mom...

Chapter 184: Evaporated

CN: Loss of Home, Passage of Time

Theora woke up to Bell’s outer dome shield breaking, and let go of what she’d been hugging. She was already on her feet as the first crack appeared, and made it to the cabin in a fraction of a second as the shell crumbled above.

On her way, Theora noticed a few things. First: the inside of the dome was secure for now, but would be destroyed within the next moment. Second: The cause of the damage was som...

Chapter 183: Raised in Reality

Theora realised she was dreaming when Dema’s tail twitched in her arms.

Dema didn’t have a tail. Much less one so thick Theora could use it as a body pillow while the rest of Dema was sprawled out across and beneath blankets and Theora’s legs.

It was a true bummer. Theora gave the tail a squeeze and then a kiss. Dema moaned a little, all sleep-drunk, but didn’t wake up. If this was a dream, then couldn’t Theora do some pretty amazing things right now? She c...

Chapter 182: System Logs

It turned out that the devices really did create a breathable atmosphere. Bell was still hesitant to let go of hers, but after Dema went back to patch up the hole they’d made to get down here, and after about an hour of Dema running around outside the bubble, she relented and stopped trying to absorb her back into it as much as possible.

Bell still kept her own bubble intact, though. She exchanged the air, but wanted to make sure that in case something went wrong, she would still have...

Chapter 181: Technology

Hi! Going to post 2 chapters today! Have fun reading C:

“Turns out, the Protans were busy, huh!” Dema exclaimed, joining their side.

“It was them?” Bell asked, her voice laden with wonder. 

“I would assume so, considering they are the only spacefaring people we have records of.” Isobel shrugged and clacked dangerously close to the ledge.

The city sloped upwards in terraces, the closest buildings around twenty paces downw...

Chapter 180: Beneath the Surface

“Bad news, Bell!” Isobel’s voice rang out in the dome.

Almost half a day had passed since Theora had woken up. She stopped doing laundry for a moment to throw a glance inside the cabin and found Bell nodded off in a chair while reading Iso’s mission reports. 

Theora absentmindedly threw the last piece of wet laundry into a basket, to carry everything away to hang it up. Thin strands spun of blood crystal stretched overhead between rocky outcrops next to the cabin — ...

Chapter 179: Lost Cause

All of Bell’s Skills, as well as her Levels and stats, had been reduced to nothing upon polyping. But Skills were inherent to people. Thus, she expected to relearn many as she got older and remembered her past. Theora gleaned at Bell’s sheet from the party screen — currently, it listed 21 Skills. 

[Calcification], [Encapsulation], [Venorosity] and [Sheen] seemed useful in a scuffle, while the others were likely what Bell was using to uphold the barriers of the green dome. The...

Chapter 178: All I Have

The next time Theora was awoken, she found herself surrounded by the lush mosses of the ‘greenhouse’.

It wasn’t a house, but it was green. A dome-like barrier encased a rocky patch of landscape, overgrown by Isobel with vegetation. Dema had erected terraces, ridges, and ledges, pillars and cliffs, to increase the surface area of this little pocket of air on an otherwise unbreathable moon landscape. Water bubbles of different sizes floated in the air, brimming green a...

Chapter 177: Happy Meal

CN: Body Horror

Theora took a glance up at Dema, who sat on a ledge overseeing the cavern, a safe distance away, letting her thin legs dangle down the edge. Dema gave her an encouraging smile, her demonic eyes gleaming in the dark.

Then, Theora took a glance at Bell, also a safe distance away, sitting on a small rock protrusion next to the exit from the chamber. Bell scowled impatiently — little jolts of her floating tentacle hair betrayed her nerves. She glowed ...

In Case You Have Thoughts (General Notes)

Hi y'all! Thank you for being here I appreciate it a lot! 💕

I'm working on the beginning chapters of book 3 right now, hopefully I'll get a chapter out by tomorrow.

For today I wanted to ask around how things are going! Specifically – this is my first Patreon ever, and admittedly I haven't been subscribed to many other Patreons before. Tbh I don't really know what's what. So I was curious to know if there was anything about your experience that I could improve. For example, ...

Chapter 176: One Last Thing [End of Book 2]

Dema had fixed things.

Brought everything back to its former state; or rather, to what she remembered of the former state, which, truth be told, was not a lot, but she had done her best. During their absence, Isobel herself had fallen into disrepair too, so Dema patched her up as best she could. Dema also played card games with little Bell for hours — always pretending to lose only to turn it all around at the very last moment, robbing countless victories from Bell’s d...

Chapter 175: Parallel Universes

Shap, snap. Iron chafed over slate.

Snap, snap. Isobel smiled at the small group assembled on the yard in front of her.

Dema had made good on her promise to make the area easier to traverse. Paths of crystallised blood snaked elegantly around the large tree trunk in the centre. They glittered under the spots of sunlight shining through the leaves up in the canopy, and the roots the paths encased sat well-preserved and gorgeously framed underneath, like at the bot...

Chapter 174: Let’s Not [Obliterate]

CN: Self-Harm

“Alright!” Isobel said, with a wide smile. “So—”

She pretended to take a look around, leaning forward with a hand held above her eyes. They were standing in the valley of a desert.

“We’re in a safe spot! Nothing around that could get swept into collateral damage. And!”

She reached over to Theora and dumped her hand into the multidimensional travelling attire. After a moment of shuffling, much to Theora’s surprise, Isobel ...

Chapter 173: Blood and Ashes

CN: Description of Injury, Blood

Surges of dense black smoke billowed into the sky as hot blazing tongues of fire licked up, fanned by the warm spring breeze. The flames loved it here. Heat pulled at the skin on Theora’s face, dried her eyes.

She wanted to rush in. Fetch Dema’s remains and hug them tight. But Dema was too scattered inside, too broken. So Theora simply stood there, feet firmly perched between flowers, wary of complicating the proce...

Chapter 172: The One Who Told Her to Come Home

CN: Death

A little cut in the world remained behind Theora as she emerged back from the Miasma.

She was fairly certain she’d returned not too far away from Dema’s house, but the journey had still messed with her head quite a lot.

She did a massive stretch. Her body was lighter now. Her bones didn’t crack like she’d gotten used to in ‘Reality’ — instead her motions were fluid and light. Moving around had always been effort, even before ‘Reality’, but ...

Chapter 171: Last Chance

CN: Discussion of Bodily Autonomy

Theora stood in front of Amanda Dupont’s grave. It was a cloudy day with a soft breeze and the occasional sunrays making it through to the ground — the forest gleamed up every now and then, rocks shining and leaves glittering.

Serim kneeled further back, in front of the large boulder by the path, where they’d placed a smaller gravestone in remembrance of Dema; it was not an actual grave — or rather, the rock itself was the ...

Chapter 170: Some Things Never End

Hey – before we get into today's chapter, I wanted to share something with you. The thing is; I've been trying to write an accompanying piece of music for this chapter. There are still things about it that might change, and I'm not sure if I will end up sharing it in the official public chapter once it gets out (initially it was just a fun idea that I thought I could learn how to compose as research for this arc, but it actually somehow almost went somewhere). I thought I'd offe...

2024-09-09 16:12:55 +0000 UTC View Post

Chapter 169: Interlude — No Copies

I woke up at the hospital two days later. Invent One was already there, sitting next to my bed, staring at the wall again.

It had placed a phone next to my pillow, playing quiet music. There were other patients there, all asleep; it was deep at night. When it saw me awake, it nodded, handed my phone to me so I could check in on my friends, then gave a curt account, like a report. Traversing the storm had been difficult; it needed to read the currents and wait in specific spots, to not b...

Chapter 168: Interlude — The Storms Are Getting Stronger

CN: Death, Loss of a Loved One, Hypothermia, Fire

The day Dema died, she barely managed to hold herself upright at the grand piano.

“We can stop if you want to. Continue another time,” I told her. We were in a music studio I’d reserved for the day, to record one of Dema’s songs for one of her schemes or whatever, but she was so weak these days, I wished Theora was here.

Dema shook her head. “Nah, let’s get this done today, Zappie.”

“You�...

Chapter 167: Things We Couldn’t Do Before

Sixteen days left. Serim had managed to get them an opening slot for a band she met at the festival, and it aligned perfectly with the last Friday before the end of the self-imposed deadline. Obviously, finding out about Dema’s circumstances turned what was a foregone conclusion into an actual choice Theora had to make.

Dema was sick. At the same time, the world was sick, because Theora and Dema were in it. 

Dema and Theora had chosen this world together, entering through a...

Chapter 166: The Confines of Reality

CN: Discussion of Death

After returning from the festival full of fresh ideas for how to finetune their program, Dema spent a lot of time brooding over new songs. Meanwhile, Theora spent a lot of time leaning against Dema’s soft body draped against her, listening to her her hum in her raspy low voice while trying to figure out lyrics. 

Theora couldn’t, however, shake off the feeling that something was weighing on Dema. And after those days at the festival,...

Chapter 165: Procrastinating the Apocalypse

“Are you sure we should be here…?” Theora asked, looking around all worried to make sure they wouldn’t bother anyone. Meanwhile, Dema was advancing stealthily through backstage to get a peek at the crowd.

“It’s gonna be fine as long as we make sure we’re not bothering anyone,” Dema proclaimed, her hand tightening around Theora’s. Technically, Dema did have permission — Serim was helping out with the electronics on stage and let them in somehow.

At least, that�...

Chapter 164: The Scroll of Binding

CN: Discussion of Death, Abuse, Jealousy

That evening, they left the dancing area still hot and breathing hard, with Theora carrying Dema halfway over her shoulder to give support. The stuffy atmosphere and smoke faded into a cool autumn drizzle. 

“I wanna go somewhere up,” Dema mumbled, dragging her shoe over the curbside. “Up.”

Theora looked around. “There are several ups.” The roof of a shed. The roof of the main house of...

Chapter 163: Dystopia II

CN: Discussion of State Violence and Criminal Activity

“Okay, well. I can’t guarantee that spots will open up at the last minute, but if you want to play at this festival, I will need your names.” He fetched a list and wrote a few notes, then looked up expectantly.

“Theora Napkins.” 

He nodded, and jotted it down. His gaze went back up.

“Serim Lee.”

That wasn’t even Serim’s legal first name. Not t...

Chapter 162: Faulty Schedules

CN: Chronic Illness, Blood, Hospital Stay, Discussion of Death

When Theora arrived at the hospital, Dema was asleep.

She lay in a bed by the window, in a two-person room, with the other bed being unoccupied. Tubes plugged into her body pumped her blood through a machine with circling buttons while an IV led a clear liquid into her wrist.

Not wanting to disturb her sleep, Theora sat down as quietly as she could on the closest chair, and lay a hand on Dema�...

Chapter 161: Invent More

CN: Discussion of Death of a Loved One

Invent One tried, for the fifteenth time, to play the melody of Dema’s volcano song, but finally stopped with a disgruntled but held-back moan. It looked at its hands — the skin was peeling, the strings had left deep cuts. 

“I apologise. I read several books on the topic, but this Shadow is not following my wishes.”

Dema tilted her head. “Well, you don’t learn to play by reading, right? You gotta practise. ...