The explosion went on for what felt like an eternity. Theora had been feeling warm one moment, and incredibly hot since. Then, she melted into a puddle.

For a while, Theora, or what was left of her, just swam through molten rock. She thought she was hearing Isobel yell something, but it was hard to make out.

Eventually, things calmed down.

Theora willed her body back together. She crawled through rock and earth and finally managed to dig herself out of the impact crater. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. She took her hand off her ear. The bracelet was still fine.

“I’m back,” she said.

Apparently, she’d landed on some kind of planet.

“Are you okay?” Isobel yelped, and she was clacking her mandibles rather frantically.

“I’m naked.”

“What? You — your attire? It melted on impact? Is it lost? Wait, how is your communication device still functional?”

“You woke me up in time,” Theora said.

A small pause. “Wait, you undressed…? You are being confusing mom, please tell me what happened.”

Theora opened her fist. There was a tiny scrap of fabric inside, singed at the edges. A pitiful remainder of what used to be her interdimensional travelling attire. When Isobel had woken her up, Theora had instinctively grabbed onto a fold and clenched it, breaking the ice of her hand into a thousand shards, and then focused on putting it back together. Keeping her fist whole and cool and clasping the tiny piece of fabric as tight as she could, to prevent the lava from reaching it as the rest of her body dissolved.

She’d done the same with the other hand over her ear, keeping the device shielded from the force of the impact.

She was glad she had succeeded. Otherwise things would have been bad.

With a forceful gesture, Theora tore the piece of fabric apart, and thus revealed more layers and folds from within. After a few more vicious rips, she’d extended the fabric far enough that she could put it back on as a cloak. It looked very rattled, a lot like Dema’s style.

Then, Theora put her hand inside one of the deeper folds, and retrieved a star map. Alright, the attire was still functional. Although it would likely take quite a while for it to fully self-repair.

“I have my clothes back,” Theora said.

“I—” Isobel sighed. “Alright, fine. I’ll take that as good news.”

“Could you explain to me what happened?”

Theora was hiking up the fringes of the crater, to take a look around. It was bright, there were no stars to be seen except a blurry sun. The entire sky was filled with clouds, except for a vaguely Theora-shaped hole, right above.

There were also some very large things at the horizon.

“It seems like you crashed into an invisible planet,” Isobel eventually said.

“What do you mean, ‘invisible’?”

“Well… I mean that it can’t be seen? We weren’t aware it existed… Shortly before you crashed, some [Diviner] came running in sweating buckets and told me there was a problem.” She shuffled around, maybe a shrug. “I guess that means we have seven planets in our system.”

Theora frowned. “I feel like, even if there was an invisible planet, I shouldn’t have crashed into it.”

“Tell me about it.” Isobel sighed. “There are either millions of invisible planets around or we were extremely unlucky. This should be almost impossible.”

Theora left the crater and found herself in a dense and high forest of long, red stalks. They were high enough for their tips to disappear into a white fog far above. The ground was uneven and filled with debris and chaos, likely caused by her mishap, but even then it seemed to be a hillscape.

“There is flora on this planet,” she said. Perhaps she’d be able to find some flowers?

“Yeah,” Isobel said. “We have magical readings, but it seems to be all plants.”

So, Theora was still alone then. Alone with these large rock-like red plants.

Then, Isobel nonchalantly went, “Interestingly enough, there appears to be a reading for a magical device,” and made Theora’s blood run cold. That was not what she wanted to hear. Definitely not. Most absolutely definitely not. She tried not to think of that last System prompt she’d received.

“It seems like I will have to hurt this planet even more,” Theora murmured instead.

Isobel stayed silent.

“I think I need directions. I assume walking to the other side of the planet would take too long. Should I wait where I am until it rotates to night?”

Isobel still didn’t respond.

“I hope there will be cloudless areas,” Theora murmured. “I won’t be able to make a properly aimed jump without seeing the stars.”

Of course, jumping into space was a bad idea, for several reasons. The scholars had already established that. But now it seemed to be the last remaining option, so Theora would have to try.

She went deeper into the forest, absent-mindedly.

“Isobel,” Theora said. “Are you still there?”

A clack resounded from the other side. “Yes,” Isobel said. “I’m sorry. I’ll need to cut connection for a bit to… assess.”

And then, she went offline.

Theora sighed.

Isobel would never be acting this way if they weren’t on a strict communications limit, but it still felt awful. Theora wanted to talk freely. Didn’t want to have to consider what could be said and what couldn’t. She wanted to know what was happening at home, and ask a thousand questions about everything. And she knew Isobel was likely feeling the same. That there were a thousand things Isobel would rather talk about, and that she was likely feeling terrible too, and holding herself together by a thread.

Well, if Isobel was gone for now, to ‘assess’, then Theora might as well do what she really didn’t want. She tried to remember the exact wording of the quest she’d received, imagining the prompt in front of her.Stolen novel; please report.

[New Side Quest: Find and lend aid to the lost Protan device.]

As Theora traversed through the forest, a few things occurred to her. For one, she didn’t know how long she’d slept before hitting this planet. She also wasn’t sure how long she’d been inside the crater before reaching out to Isobel. That was a problem because the connection had been open.

If it was a few minutes, that was fine. What if Theora had taken hours to collect herself back into a human-like shape? Isobel could have kept the connection open that entire time in hopes of a sign of life. In that case, they might have lost a lot of communication time. They could, in fact, be close to running out. Isobel would know, so Theora was planning to ask her next time she established a connection.

There was also the fact that Isobel had sounded terrified.

There were only really two things that could mean in relation to Theora’s task. It meant that either she could no longer complete it, or… Well.

In Theora’s mind, there really was nothing stopping her from getting to a proper position and then jumping really hard. The main issue was that jumps were incredibly inaccurate, and she did have to hit a patch of magic mould somehow to maintain communications, so it wasn’t a first choice. They also hadn’t considered that approach on Theora’s home planet because they wanted to avoid an ice age, but on a planet without any fauna it seemed somewhat more justifiable, even though Theora still hoped that the plant life would make it through her rough treatment of its home.

The total communication time of their device was about twenty hours; so Theora couldn’t have been stuck in that crater for weeks, and she definitely didn’t feel like she had. In other words, if she succeeded with a proper jump, the mission should still be possible…

Which meant… The most likely reason for ‘things looking really bad’ was…

Theora clenched her cloak. No use crying over spilt tea. She’d always known this might happen. It made sense too with what she’d seen of this planet so far. The clouds were very dense. The forest seemed to stretch over a large area, although there was obviously no telling how much of this planet looked like this, which was actually part of the problem. The people back home had access to divination, but it’s not like they could chart an entirely new planet within hours or days.

Right now, they were probably hard at work to solve all of the related problems, but the longer they took, the clearer the outcome became. Hope was running out by the second, and ultimately, what Theora imagined Isobel was spending her efforts on right now was not the priority of their mission, at least not entirely.

Theora sighed.

Gravitational pull was much, much stronger on this planet than on Himaeya. Still, she tried to make large jumps to traverse distances faster, in hopes of reaching the end of this forest, or the top of a mountain, and see some more of this planet.

And thus, tragically, she saw more of this planet, and eventually remembered why it felt so familiar. She’d seen it before, and she wished she hadn’t.

According to Isobel, it was almost impossible to coincidentally hit an invisible planet while trying to exit the solar system — planets were too small, and space was too large. And the red, endless bamboo stalks and the fog billowing between them felt all too similar to the place she’d visited inside the Shade, while using [im//possibility] countless times.

Had her affecting reality back then led her here? Had it affected the chances of hitting a random planet? Had she somehow made impossibilities align to lead her to this end?

Of course, during her use of [im//possibility], she’d seen many things, and her memory was hazy. It was possible that it only looked similar, but wasn’t the same place at all. Or that it was completely natural to experience some kind of déjà vu after hopping through countless almost impossible and almost possible events. In the end, the Skill also would have only turned this almost possible, meaning that it couldn’t really have landed her here… Unless, of course, she’d accidentally made missing this planet upon her exit almost impossible.

Yes. If her Skill had anything to do with this at all, then that was likely what had happened. Which meant that, yet again, this was her own fault.

The bamboo forest wasn’t all the planet had to offer. After a while, it thinned out, leaving space for other types of vegetation. The structures were similar, though. All of them seemed made of hard materials, and the colours were of a similar, muted palette that still managed to pierce through the grey mountain and fog. A saturated brick red, a glowing olive, and lavender — but no scarlets, lime greens or hot pinks. It was a beautiful place, and Theora found silvery lakes that weren’t made of water, but mercury, perhaps. She found caves with bioluminescent growths, and she even found a root-like plant that could move around, and watched it run away from her.

As she watched the little thing make its last turn to disappear behind a rocky cliff, Theora started wondering if that was the point of it all.

This planet was full of magic and had a strong aura, but it was only felt on its surface, not outside. This place had made its own hull of protection. Perhaps that was why scholars and diviners couldn’t find other forms of life in the universe? Maybe if a planet started to offer a creature such as Theora, it would always eventually be devoured by the large fish in the galactic ocean. Perhaps becoming invisible was the only way to survive.

And now, Theora had somehow come across this place nonetheless, and was about to hurt it even more. Apparently, one could stay safe from the Ancient Devourer, but nothing could stay safe from Theora.

Including that ‘Lost Protan Device’. Whatever it was, at least the System had claimed that Theora should lend aid to it, not destroy it, so it didn’t seem like an awful quest on first glance, but at least it meant that the System had been aware that Theora would land here, if indeed the quest related to the device Isobel had mentioned.

But it seemed too much of a coincidence to be unrelated. Theora couldn’t ‘find and lend aid’ to something while soaring through the galaxy; it only made sense here, on a planet. It would also have made sense if the device had gotten stuck in a mould patch, but she couldn’t have searched through those anyway, there weren’t enough resources left.

The System giving out a quest was terrifying regardless. Theora knew the System had two goals; one, to keep their home planet safe, and two, to kill the Ancient Evil. In the System’s mind, this was likely the same goal. It was therefore reasonable to assume that the quest wouldn’t interfere with the success of Theora’s mission, because if it did, the System would fail at keeping the planet safe. So, perhaps the Protan device could help Theora somehow, to make it to her destination in time.

Or, perhaps the Protan device was meant to prevent Theora from coming home once her mission was complete. So that the System could make another attempt at Dema.

All this thinking didn’t really help, though. Theora was here now, she had time, and apparently there was some kind of lost magitek device stuck on this planet that needed help, so she might as well do that. It would be easy, of course, if Theora used her reserve-Orb to cast the Wish of Finding and locate the device with that. Perhaps that was the System’s goal.

Theora took a deep breath, and sat down on the ground. She’d surveyed the immediate surroundings for a few hours; the forest and the bamboo stalks and what little she could see of the sky, and so now it was time to see if she could feel the presence of the device.

It took a long time, but eventually, she did find something that felt a little bit like home. It was a long way off, but she could make it if she hurried, and Isobel had still not reached out. It also felt, at least somewhat, alive. That was what made it harder to find, because Theora had initially looked for an inanimate presence.

And so, she got up, and started walking.

Isobel didn’t call back for a long time, and that more or less confirmed Theora’s suspicion. She already knew what she’d be told once communication would come back online, and she tried to both brace herself for it and distract herself from it at the same time. Whenever her thoughts started hurting too much, she looked at a pretty flower-like thing, and stopped herself from collecting it because it wasn’t hers to take.

She tried to savour the feeling of her fingers grazing against the surface of a plant looking like a mixture of capped mushroom and tumbleweed, and feeling its soft toxicity warn her of doing harm. Or maybe it wasn’t warning her at all, because there didn’t seem to be any predators around. Or perhaps the predators had died out because they couldn’t find a way to stomach these plants?

Everything here was firm and solid, so perhaps eating each other was too slow a process, or perhaps they did eat each other, just not on a timescale Theora could perceive while walking across the surface for a mere few hours.

If only Theora could take one last look at the System. If only she could reread the logs; see Dema’s words again, or read Balinth’s last chapter, but she’d lost all access, and nothing would respond. By now, the light lag of one direction would have maybe been an hour long, but that was still so much better than losing everything forever. She’d trade a lag of weeks for this, of months or years.

It was alright. She’d tried to help the Shade, and that had maybe gotten her to this beautiful place, so there was that, and it was fine. She found another runner plant, and it hid in a little crevice, so Theora did her best to move away quickly to not stress it out. Perhaps the flora could feel her suppressed aura? Perhaps these runner plants worked in such a way that they moved to places with little competition, and helped cover the planet in life like that.

And, soon after, she found the lost Protan device.