Chapter 34: Pain

Level up!

Tier 1 [Bard], level 7 — Tier 1 [Bard], level 8

Skill earned: [Inspiring Song] (active)

Skill earned: [Play On] (active)

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Warrior], level 7 — Tier 1 [Warrior], level 9

Skill upgraded: [Lesser Endurance] — [Serviceable Endurance] (passive, upgradeable)

Skill earned: [Dense Mass] (passive)

Skill earned: [Fight Dirty] (Active)

***

Level up!

Tier 1 [Ranger], level 7 — Tier 1 [Ranger], level 8

Skill earned: [Hand Signal] (active)

***

Pain.

Pain is my entire world.

Delirious and distant, a flash of pain, and then the sweet embrace of sleep once more.

Wet.

Wet is… if not my entire world, then at least one nation with a high GDP, exporting wet.

The rest of it is still pain.

Cool liquid trickles across my face, down my chin onto my chest.

Water burns its way down the wartorn, salted land of my throat.

I think I hear something, but can't be sure. All I want is to go back to sleep.

The water is quickly followed by a mash of… something, forced into my mouth by something hard. Probably food, if I had to guess. It scalds inside my mouth, and the metal spoon bruises. I cough up the food, making pathetic noises of pain as the act of hacking to clear my airways hurts incredibly.

Even breathing burns.

I think I'm left alone for a while, the pain becoming a shrill hum that slowly sinks into background noise. I'm almost back to sweet oblivion, when a hand softly raises my head.

The boiling fluid in my head swirls with the movement, and my face contorts into pain briefly, before more food is shoved into my open mouth.

Cold this time, it makes it down. The act of swallowing is easier to commit to than spitting it out, but is quickly regretted as the trash can fires of my protesting throat escalate to the molotovs of a revolution.

I vomit it back up. I only realize this well after the fact, distantly wondering why I feel sticky.

Once more, sleep.

***

I am awake, but not lucid.

I can hear them talking, but I can't quite listen. Only a few words every now and again make the journey to the language centers of my brain.

“— —trap— —.”

“— dead — — skeleton—.”

“— sick — —. — — — — loot — Cy. Poor guy deserves it.”

“Hopefully — — some so he has a gift when he wakes up.”

“Maybe we can find somethin’ to cure him. I think he'd ‘preciate that more.”

“He said he has to sweat it out to get his skills upgraded, remember? Moron signed up for this himself. Didn't think that meant he signed us up to be nurses though. You're feeding him next. I've had my fill of getting puked on.”

I try to say something to the tune of a simple “Fuck you Izzy,” too delirious to come up with something clever, but all that occurs is a rumble in my throat, followed by severe and painful coughing, continuing to shred my throat.

My body curls on itself, before I feel a gently calloused hand on my back.

“Let it out son, but breathe. There ya go. Hold it out, then in. Out, in. There ya go.”

“Demarcus, hand me my waterskin will ya? C'mon son, just a swig. Yer burnin’ up.”

Mato lifts my head slightly, and puts the waterskin to my lips. My face tightens in pain as the water goes down, but it quickly soothes, and I drink greedily.

He pulls it away, not wanting to overwhelm my healing body, and I want to say thank you. I know I can't. Not quite yet. So, as Mato slowly lowers my head back down onto some bedding they made up for me, I summon what energy I have to slowly raise my arm. It aches on the joints, the skin burns where it touches my undershirt and the tips of my fingers feel skinless and raw, but I raise it.

I weakly pat Mato's hand twice. It's the best I can do.

He says something, but I'm already slipping off.

And in that haze, in one of my most vulnerable states where thoughts are unfinished, furtive things— I come to a decision. Possibly a foolish one.

No way in hell am I gonna let Mato die.

***

I wake, groggily, mouth dry and sticky like it's coated in maple syrup, and I take a bold leap.

I open my eye.

The room I am in is foreign. The ceiling is painted with an elaborate and stylized mural of a magnificent desert city. I roll, and see the walls plastered in countless little paintings— vignettes. Moments and memories.

I see our camping setup around us, but I don't see my friends.

While I think about it, I instinctively know that it has been 41 hours, 8 minutes, and 26 seconds since I opened the door.

God damn, they've been carrying me around all this time?

Despite having moments of waking and vague recollections of force-feedings or being jostled about and carried, this, I think, is the first time I've been fully and completely lucid.

And I'm hungry.

I roll my neck slightly, grunting with the effort and the feeling similar to sunburn— if I'd been sunburnt down to my bones— and find my satchel, just out of reach.

With no one around, I pathetically flail and flop, trying to reach it. Letting out meagre and childish whimpers.

I fall back, a failure, and stew in self-pity for a moment before I summon the courage to sit up.

I manage it, and lean, reaching for my bag.

I topple over.

But hey, I reached the bag.

I flop open the satchel, digging around to find my rations and waterskin.

That's how my returning friends find me. Hosing grape jelly down my throat with desperate gulps of water.

“Cy!” Demarcus yells, elated, and slides on his knees to wrap me in his arms.

“Ach!— Owowowow!” I let out, my throat sticking from disuse.

Demarcus relents, letting go, and tosses off his barbute helmet to look me in the eye.

“You're awake! How ya feeling lil buddy?”

“Like a hamster in a microwave. How about you? You, uh, really took a beating out there.”

“Dude, that was like, two days ago. I'm fine. We all leveled up— I jumped two actually— and we've been clearing the way ahead while you recover.”

“That, and keeping you from dying.” Izzy chimes in.

“Thank you.” I croak out.

“Yeah, yeah. Just—”

“No, I'm serious. Thank you. I don't remember all of it but, you could've just let me sweat it out— the fact that you didn't— means a lot.”

Izzy looks… stuck, for a meaning of the word. She stares at me for a moment before turning away while replying.

“Just don't do it again. And you owe me!”

“Sure Iz, I officially owe you one major favor.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

I painfully laugh. “Sure.”

Finally, I turn to Mato who sits down next to me with an old-man grunt.

“Thanks, Mato.”

“Eh. Yer welcome. I'd ask you not to make a habit of doin’ this kinda stuff but I get the feelin’ that this is precisely the kinda stuff yer gonna do.” He says, setting down his bag and starting to dig through it.

“Is this gonna be how it is if we stick with you? Ya get up to some crazy hijinks that leave ya half-dead and we gotta clean up after ya?”

I swallow hard as Demarcus tells Mato to lay off.

I raise a hand.

“No, he's right, D. I do think this isn't gonna be uncommon. But, I promise Mato, imma do everything I can not to make my problems everyone else's.”

“Why doesn't that make me feel better?” Izzy asks, picking at a loose string on her fluffy bard outfit. She's still wearing the ring of dexterity and its effects are visible in her movements.

“Well, at least I'm going to try. That has to amount to something. And, look, these methods are a little extreme right now but, we're leveling! The further along we get the more tools we'll have to not deal with this stuff.”

“Besides,” I continue, patting my binder. “I have it on good authority that I'll be dealing with my own messes. Even if it's future me. You guys won't be the clean-up crew forever.”

Demarcus plops down next to me, undoing the straps on his armor. He looks up to meet my eye.

“Cy, I love you, but you're lying to yourself. I'll always be cleaning up your messes.”

He pats me on the shoulder and I wince.

“Wouldn't have it any other way.”

Izzy rolls her eyes and Mato just listens silently as he works, before turning back to me.

“Hungry?”

***

They wind up taking a break for the rest of the day, cooking something up and filling me in.

They handed me some loot to identify; namely, a pair of fluted gauntlets made of some kind of brass-like metal, and a small statuette of the pharaoh, dismissively holding a set of scales out to his side, staring ahead judgementally.

I'd love to cast [Eye-dentify] on them, but even the thought of it almost causes me to puke. I push them aside and fall back down into my bedding, intermittently passing out and coming to as time slips and jumps ahead through the day in my delirium.

When I wake in the night, I take time to continue copying the binder, re-reading the outlined steps for this dungeon. My memories of them are a little fuzzy while I'm like this, even with [Perfect Memory]. I suppose perfect doesn't mean infallible.

When the others wake, and after a painful breakfast I have to mash up and mix in with my water like a glass full of the backwash of a 5 year old— we decide we can't afford to wait around, and I chance an attempt at standing.

The pull of Demarcus’ arm as he helps me up feels like it's going to pull the arm out of the socket, every movement and bit of tension amplified a thousand fold in the pain of mana-sickness. I manage to grit my teeth and bear it, even once I get to fully standing and feel my full weight pressing onto just the soles of my feet, their screams of protest slowly dim to background noise as Demarcus winds up carrying his bag and mine. I use my Pokin’ Stick to support my weight in one hand, leaning heavily on it, while I clutch the binder tightly under my other.

Trudging like an old lady with a walker, I wince my way over to a vase in an alcove on one of the walls, and pull out a square bottle potion. The bottle itself feels heavy, durable.

The label on it reads ‘hair o’ the magical dog’ and has a cartoonish depiction of a labrador in a wizard hat, with a big stylistic eye with two lines in an L shape in the pupil, like the hands of a clock, in the background.

Every part of me wants to drink it now and be done with it, but I can keep going long enough to reach the final resting chamber.

I trudge on, as my friends patiently wait for me, or scout ahead. Demarcus tries conversation at first but my whole being is focused on just walking, and I am hunched over and panting.

My steps are slow, and my progress gradual, as if I am an NPC in one of those escort missions in a video game where they walk at half your walking speed so my friends have to constantly stop and wait.

I glance up now and again just to see what rooms the others had to clear while I was out. I squint and see ornate halls, a vault like room with an empty sarcophagus surrounded by the carcasses of strange isopodish beetles.

Slowly, the temperature grows, and I look up to see Demarcus and Mato holding open either side of a metal door and the remnants of a lock scattered across the floor. On the wall beside the door is that same blue symbol of the book with the line around it. I promptly ignore it.

I trudge through the doorway and see a long tiled hall ending in another metal door.

The tiles all have carved symbols in them; Scales, scarab, ankh, cat, and— two different tall and long-necked birds, nearly identical except for the directions they are facing, and one bird having a thin line of feathers sticking out the back of its head.

“Whuh?” I start flipping back through my binder, breaths forceful and measured after the trek.

“Which one of these is a fucking crane? I don't know birds!”

I look around at my clueless and unhelpful friends.

I am tired, my— everything hurts, and this shitty little hallway is all that stands between me and being able to drink this god damn dog potion. So,

Fuck it.

This is why God invented Pokin’ Sticks.

I tap the right facing bird with the thin line of feathers on the back of its head. Start being a little forceful, really smacking it with the stick, and nothing falls away.

I shrug, and with my stick out for balance I take a step.

“Wait!—” Mato shouts with an outstretched hand, and I groggily turn just in time to feel the world drop out from under me.

Time seems to gasp, and the brief moment where its adrenaline kicks in extends and slows.

Suddenly, the room boils with heat as all but the other bird tiles fall away— including the one under my foot.

It would seem only a living being touching them activates it, not a stick. For a single brief moment I wonder how the tiles determine that, as flesh never touched it, a boot did. So what's the difference between my stick and my boot? Intention?

My delirious and misfiring brain kicks back into gear as my stomach lunches and my elbow suddenly burns in pain as Mato snags me by it.

I hear the floor tiles hit the lava far beneath me with a roiling rhythm of bubbles and burps. It is a far drop to the lava below, otherwise the air itself would be scorching.

For a brief moment I am in freefall before Mato's grip changes my direction and I impact the side of the pit.

My weighty impact does two things:

First, it nearly pulls Mato off his feet, as he had to lean and reach to grab me and his footing is unbraced. Thankfully, Izzy's reaction time is remarkable, and she grabs Mato and Demarcus by the waists, looping her arms around both to link a lot more weight atop the pit.

Second, as the arm that Mato grabbed by the elbow was the one I was holding the binder against my chest with, the [Traveler’s Journal] gifted to me by my future self twists out of my grip and goes spiraling towards the lava.

My initial reaction is to freak out and try to catch it, then I remember that this was predestined and planned for; Copy over half manually, then use a scroll of [Transcribe Text] on the 2nd half once I get across this hall.

Once I get across this hall.

My stomach drops and my clouded mind sharpens once I realize that I haven't copied over the latter half. Potentially years of knowledge about the future. So many spells, potions, and the incredibly shitty beastiary— just… gone.

“Nooo—”

“—ooooo!”

My voice has a strange echo, and I realize I'm not the only one screaming.

My and my friends’ eyes flit about, searching, until we lock onto the book itself.

The shrunken head I had been using as a bookmark shrieks as it, and the binder it is attached to, goes spiraling towards the lava.

“Nooo! I had so many secrets to tell! I never— AAAAHHH!!!”

We all blink, astounded, as the shrunken head and my [Traveler’s Journal] burst into flame and quickly evaporate under the intense heat.

My friends hoist me up back to the top of the pit and I shake on the ground, muttering to myself.

“Oh god, I've done it, I've branched myself. We're all doomed. I'm so sorry, I've doomed us all. Oh god my book. Is that what that symbol meant? It's okay. We're okay. At least now he doesn't have to die, right? I don't feel any different though.”

“Yer alright, son. We got ya back up here. Yer safe. Whatcha mumblin’ ‘bout?” fake, branched Mato says

“Nothing, fake-Mato. You're just not real. Maybe haven't been for a while. When did I branch? The door? Just now? Oh god I'm gonna get summoned by the real me later.”

“You're freaking out half-baked. Calm down.” fake-Izzy says.

Fake-Demarcus leans down, handing me my Pokin’ Stick that— of all things— I managed to hold onto, then sits down next to me.

“It's alright man, it's alr—”

“It's fully fucking not!”

Demarcus puts a hand on my shoulder and looks me dead in the eye, shaking me slightly.

“You're alive.”

“I might not—”

“Shut up. You're alive. I'm alive. Don't overthink this. Just do what you can.”

“D, I lost the book. Not only is that so much valuable information just lost! But, this wasn't supposed to happen!... yet. Which means this isn't the primary timeline, which means we're not real!”

Demarcus just shrugs, and stands.

“Alright. Whatever. Doesn't change much to me.”

“What? Dude, do you understand what I'm saying?”

“Not really. But that doesn't matter. I don't care if some timey wimey bullshit says I'm not real. I feel pretty damn real. I'm the realest. And besides, even if I'm not, what am I gonna do about it? Nothing. Just keep moving forward. What about you?” He says, looking down and offering a hand up.

I lay there another moment, then say “Honestly, I'd like to keep sulking in devastation, but you make good points. Plus I wanna stop being mana sick. Maybe this is all just a hallucination and I'm still asleep in the other room. I'll find out once I drink the potion.”

He hoists me up, and we turn back to the tile hall, now a disparate and sparse array of single tiles, floating above a pit.

Mato and Iz are staring at me from my peripheral vision. Wisely, they decide to keep their thoughts to themselves for now, just like I am pushing the soul-wrenching, hope-burning grief aside until we cross this shitass minecraft parkour of a hallway and I can drink the dog juice and think a little more straight.

The crane tiles— apparently cranes don't have that little strip of feathers out the back of their heads. I'm so looking forward to killing this pharaoh guy later… if I actually get to do that in my possibly branched timeline. Ignoring that thought— the crane tiles are spaced out to still be traversable, mostly within comfortable striding distance between each other. Mato, as our de facto scout, goes first.

He ties off a lifeline of rope around his waist and attaches it to the door behind us, then steps off onto the first floating square. It proves to be stable and secure, not even dipping under his weight. The tiles are somewhere between 2 and 3 square feet, so he can stand comfortably without balancing. He steps off to the next, and the next, before turning to face us when he's about halfway across.

“I think we should go across one at a time, with lifelines. Izzy can come after me. Demarcus, you should go with Cy.” He points at me now.

“Yer footin’s still a bit unsure. Lil’ woozy still, I'd bet. Demarcus, just give him a hand gettin’ from one to another.”

Demarcus gives him a thumbs up.

Distraught, shell-shocked, and still barely conscious from mana poisoning, I don't bother asserting that I could do this myself. I could probably use the help.

Instead, it's Isabella who raises her hand.

“Uh, quick question?”

Mato nods.

“I don't know how to tie that.” She says, pointing to the rope harness Mato had tied around his waist and between his legs.

Mato sighs, comes back, and gives us a quick lesson on how to tie a ‘swiss seat’. We don't have enough rope for us all to have a lifeline at once, so one will have to cross, then someone behind will have to untie it and drag the rope back across.

Mato gets ¾ of the way across, before his line goes taught. He waves it off, telling us to “do what I say, not what I do.” Untying the harness and just walking the rest without issue.

We pull the rope back and extend it with another knot that Mato yells the instructions for across the hall, and Izzy is next.

Her legs tremble on the 3rd tile, and she yells back to us.

“Did I ever mention that I'm scared of heights?! Especially when dangling over a pit of lava?!”

“You've got this!” D yells back, reassuringly.

“You've got a harness and we're holding tight. But you won't fall.”

“Tell that to my legs!” She says, gesturing to her jiggling, trembling legs.

“You'll be fine!” I yell, my throat protesting the vibrations.

“Besides, you've got that ring of dexterity! You could probably cartwheel across!”

“I'd call it a victory if I manage to crawl across!”

“If you think that's easier, by all means!”

Despite her fears, she makes it across with little difficulty outside of any inflicted on herself. She unties the harness, and Demarcus begins to reel it in.

The rope slips from where it laid across a floating tile, and falls into the pit. The end of the now-extended rope falls in that swinging arc back towards us, and encroaches dangerously close to the lava. So close, in fact, one could say it lands in the lava.

I'm saying that.

It fell in the lava.

Izzy screams from the other side of the hall, shouting that that would've been her! Even though a good 12 feet of the rope was tied up in her harness, so she wouldn't have gone into the lava.

Just been roasted 12 feet above it.

Mato yells at us to save the rope, and we quickly haul as much up as we can as the flames race us up the rope. Demarcus keeps reeling despite the flames, his hands safely covered by his gauntlets, as I stomp on the flaming coil on the floor.

Most of it is salvageable, just having lost the last 20 feet or so, leaving another 20 feet blackened from fire. Mato will have to inspect it later. But, of course, this means Demarcus and I will have to cross without a lifeline.

I shrug.

“Hey, I'm pretty much dead anyways. Either way I'm not gonna be mana sick anymore.” I joke.

“Yeah, alright. Don't get tempted though. And no getting impatient, take it slow, lemme go first and help you over to the next. Stow your stick and let's go, man.” Demarcus replies.

He walks onto the tile still attached to this side of the pit, then steps off onto the next, leaning back with a hand extended to help me over.

I take it, he heaves, and I am yanked off my feet by his sudden strength.

His “help” almost has me toppled over and in the drink first thing, but he holds me tight as I find my footing.

I shoot him an evil glare and he smiles guiltily.

“Sorry.”

It continues like this the whole way across. Step, pull, step, pull, and I am sweating rivers. Not so much from the stress but from the ambient temperature of the lava room having a spa day with the feverish mana sickness. But eventually, we make it across.

I cave instantly and begin tearing through my satchel, still being held by Demarcus, and greedily drink down the ‘hair o’ the magical dog' potion.

In its defence, it does somehow manage to taste like how a wet dog smells, so at least the name is accurate.

I smack my lips once or twice, and open my mouth for some quip, before feeling that ambient burning throughout my body that I had tuned out begin to pick up, rapidly.

My blood begins to hum ‘Yankee Doodle’ and I double over with a sharp and breathy exclamation of pain as it feels like my insides are being scraped with an ice chisel.

Demarcus quickly catches me and kneels in concern and I'm about to tell him to back off when, as soon as I open my mouth, horrid magical vomit comes pouring out of me in viscous, phlegmy clumps.

Neon blue blobs come rocketing from my throat, nose, and I swear I feel it through my empty eye socket.

Noises no man should make echo through the hall, and I beg for my life, now on my hands and knees. My sweat feels thick and sticky, like dried soda.

The seconds are violently dragged into eons, their fingernails leaving grooves in the floor, but as soon as it started, it abates.

Shaking and shuddering, I stare at the pile of blue goop in front of me, my long hair curtaining over my vision in thick, sweaty locks. I think I see some of the goop on the tips.

I begin to speak.

“I— Horgh— I think that's it.”

I fall back to seated, and despite the ordeal, I break into a surprised smile.

“You alright?” Demarcus asks.

“Alright? I feel great! Oh man I forgot that breathing wasn't supposed to hurt! Complain all you want about the side effects, this potion works!” I say, and clap Demarcus on the shoulder.

Lively, I take my bag back from Demarcus. Izzy looks at me with a face twisted so far in disgust it's practically sideways. Mato, normally unperturbed, is barely overshadowing his surprise and disgust with his concern.

“Let's get to work on this door, huh?” I say, gesturing to the metal door before us.

They reluctantly peel their eyes from the gelatinous blue-raspberry poison puke and turn to the door ahead of us, opening it and examining the room beyond.

As soon as I think their eyes are off me, I pull out an empty mana potion bottle and scoop up a bit of the stomach slop. It's most definitely magical and will probably make for a good alchemical ingredient.

The memory of the fact that I lost my journal hits me once more as I try to plan for the future. A future I may no longer have.

I shake it off, burying it for the time being as dwelling on it won't change it and I have bigger things to worry about.

The final resting chamber lies before us. A small and ornate thing, gold and sandstone surrounds us in a circular room. Magical lights and enchantments have made their way into the carvings lining the walls. Hieroglyphics and murals cover every square inch of the walls, most depicting the pharaoh this tomb was for.

The wall opposite the entrance has a simple activation rune similar to the one from the chimera rune.

“Oh fuck that.” I say, tracing the walls all around the rune to make sure all the hieroglyphics aren't a single line and I won't be going through the same ordeal.

“Well, this is our last chance to rest before we fight a ‘beholder lich,’ whatever that is.” I say. “So, check your gear I guess while I… yep. There it is.”

It doesn’t take long to find the brick painted over with a blue X, and I direct Demarcus to smash it.

Brushing off the stone dust, I find a small, cylindrical leather case with that same eye with clock hands symbol engraved on it and an ancient blue ribbon wrapped around it.

I slump over, sitting against the wall holding it, and just stare at it for a minute.

The crew starts checking over their things. Izzy ties up her hair, tunes her guitar, then starts muttering something under her breath as she plays with the ring of dexterity on her finger. Mato summons his daily crossbow bolts and Demarcus just tightens some of his armor’s fastenings before coming over.

“Everything good?”

“I mean, no. But— oh whatever.”

I pull the ribbon and click open the case. Inside is a rolled scroll that I force myself to open.

Scrawled upon ancient parchment is a single symbol;

A penis.

Shittily drawn in red crayon of all things.

Agog, I just stare for a while, before it hits me hard enough for me to yell.

“Oh what the fuck?!”

Of course, everybody looks over.

Izzy asks “what is it?”

I quickly stuff the “scroll” back into the case and then the case into my bag before replying “nothing. Just another prank from my future self.”

My mind reels, thinking that if there wasn't ever a [Transcribe Text] scroll, then was I meant to lose the journal? Did my [Traveler's Journal] lie?

Maybe this is just a side effect of being branched? No, no way. Cuz that's definitely some shit future me would pull. Did this place get looted before it joined the tutorial? But, nothing else was touched.

Just… what the fuck?

Folks are standing around, still glancing at me so I try not to look like I'm thinking about the ontological significance of a dick drawing.

I hold out my hand and gesture to Demarcus.

“Hey, pass me that loot y'all needed identified. I can cast spells without exploding again so, now's a good time. It'd be good to have them for the fight anyways.”

Demarcus hands over the fluted, brassy gauntlets and the small gold and silver statuette of the pharaoh holding the scales.

I begin to cast [Eye-dentify] and instantly feel strange. At first I flinch, expecting the conversion to waste mana to burn, but then feel such ease. Casting the spell feels like I'd been walking around with 50 pound ankle weights and just took them off. The cost of mana is so insignificant I wouldn't even call it a drop in a bucket, more of a drop in a bathtub. It feels like my sinuses have finally cleared after a long cold.

I cast the spell, grinning like an idiot, and give my assessments.

“Right. Well, the gauntlets are Demarcus’. I don't know much about them but the important bit is that they're enchanted with a magnetic grip and a rechargeable whosywhatsit that'll resist a disarming spell or skill. So yeah, all you big guy.”

I hold up the statuette.

“This condescending asshole is apparently a truth-stone. Saw one back in that little town but it was a tuning fork with binary lie/truth. I guess there are multiple different types— or qualities? Doesn't matter.”

“This one will show you the degree to which the person speaking is telling the truth. If every word out of their mouth is bullshit down to the prepositions, the scales will tip all the way left. If they're telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the way to the right.”

I stand and step towards Izzy, and slap it into her hand.

“Why me?” She asks.

“So you can call me out on my bullshit. Plus, your bag has space.” I reply, glancing at the statuette's scales tipping slightly to the left. A lie through omission.

In truth, it's because she's a teenage girl, and having a way to see if someone's lying to you would save her some grief. Certainty is a luxury we all learn to live without, but that's a painfully learned lesson. Doesn't have to be.

As the two of them play with their new toys, I pull out and open my [Traveler's Journal]. I stare at the empty half of the binder. The sight sinks in my gut like a rock.

Some part of me tingles in an otherworldly sensation I hadn't realized I'd been feeling until now. Not quite a feeling of wrongness but something not sitting right, which clicks into place like a hundred pieces of a jigsaw puzzle slapping into place simultaneously.

The feeling is hard to identify, but my best guess is it is my [Paradox Resistance] and [Sense of Timing] skills, my very class itself— as well as something else, beyond me— reacting to a paradox resolving itself.

I stare at empty pages and mull it over, realizing that if I had copied over the text from the old journal to this one— which, again, are the exact same journal just at different points in time— then the text never would have been originally written, just copied from itself. Sourceless.

Future me had said the binder was predestined to be destroyed to resolve the “Virgin birth paradox.” Was this what he was referring to? Was I never supposed to finish copying it? Was I supposed to not follow the book's instructions? Was that what the ‘no book’ symbol meant? Was that why I got a red crayon dick drawing?

Does this mean I'm not branched?

I shudder, uncertain, and remind myself to take comfort in the uncertainty. Uncertainty is safe. Full of potential.

Once confirmed that everyone but me is ready— seeing as I've been staring at empty pages thinking about paradoxes and dicks— I nod to each of them, getting enthusiastic, stressed, or resigned nods in return.

I touch my hand to the rune, tensing up in expectation of the worst, but even with a drop of mana it activates.

We jostle as the entire room begins to turn, rotating until the door we entered through opens once more to a new chamber. And pale, horrid light bathes us through the opening.