To Hell with the Author, Chapter 55: Already Won

[Voiceless Echo]. [Pretender] Ultimate Skill

Cooldown: 1000 hours + [Target Stat Total] / 15

Duration: 48 hours

Description: Upon activation, choose a target you have previously touched. Your body transforms into a copy of the target, retaining all its properties except location (including memories, personality, abilities and system related data), while your mind acts as a supervisor to that copy, able to give irresistible suggestions to alter its behaviour, memory, perception and judgement.Upon release, memories made during the transformation may be relayed to the target telepathically.

The perfect Skill for infiltration. The pinnacle of the [Pretender]-Class.

Normally, when acting as an impostor, one would need to learn about the mannerisms, personality and knowledge of the target, or skillfully skirt around any situation that might reveal a lack of those. [Voiceless Echo] does not have this kind of weakness. In addition, it helps with defending against opposing intelligence agents. If, for example, a person of interest needs protection, the Skill can be used to create a body double, and in the event that the [Pretender] is killed, the memory of the assassination can be transferred to the intended victim. Lastly, this Skill is the only [Pretender]-Class Skill that can be used for combat, since it can copy strong targets and make them fight for you.

For weeks, maybe months, I went through options on how I could prevent Gonell’s death, all of which were, to some degree, flawed.

Gonell has to die so she doesn’t solve the conflicts in this story all on her own, especially later on, during the Calamity of Errata. These problems are supposed to be solved by the original main character Wallace after all, and not by a side character who barely ever appeared who happened to be strong enough. Gonell also has to be found by Wallace while she’s bleeding out, so that he can hear her last words, and, in his darkest hour, find the willpower to continue and be inspired by her death.

As such, she’s playing an important role.

All this context places some severe limitations on what I can do to prevent this from happening; or, to be more specific, to make it seem like it happened when it really didn’t. For one, Gonell dies in the highest-level dungeon of this world. It is filled with the strongest types of Errata, including at least one Messenger. As a [Pretender], I am completely useless in that environment, and would simply be killed. I would not even be able to reach the venue of her last stand. That in and of itself, is not an insurmountable obstacle, especially with allies like Theora and Dema who could have, potentially, helped me reach it, but the issues do not stop there.

Secondly, someone has to die, even if it’s not Gonell, in order for Wallace to be inspired. Obviously, that someone would need to look like Gonell even after death, which rules out a large quantity of the typical shapeshifter abilities I could have otherwise used. But, if someone dies in Gonell’s stead, that poses the problem that Gonell still exists, and knowing her personality, she would continue to fight and protect the world as long as she lives.

The author would not allow someone to die in Gonell’s place if Gonell would then still end up messing with the outline afterwards. Any action that would attempt to simply have Gonell go somewhere else on the day of her death would be thwarted by an outline error. The only way to make sure that Gonell doesn’t mess with the outline after her scheduled expiration date is to remove her ability to do anything at all. At first I was hoping I could somehow find a way for Theora to evacuate Gonell from the story by exiting early with her somehow, but that still leaves a lot up to chance, and it would be somewhat hard to convince Gonell to abandon a world where she’s still needed, especially if we can’t even tell her the truth.

Which is why I had to procure the strongest sealant of this world — the Frame of the Lost. Once activated, it contains a person for a chosen amount of time. I picked two years, because that’s how long the rest of the plot will take to play out. Once she returns, the fact that she survived will no longer matter. I don’t have to worry about her finding a way to break the seal either, because the author will be on my side and simply disallow her to get out.

It is a time-freezing seal, so she won’t age while inside, and it isn’t possible to break the seal from the outside early — it was tried, and ended badly. It’s a brutal approach but has the lowest chance of unforeseeable complications.

So that’s it.

Gonell — the strongest entity on the planet — will disappear at the same time that someone who looks and acts exactly like her dies, instilling Wallace with the conviction to move on despite experiencing a big personal crisis. And then, over the next two years, he will figure out that it’s all the King’s fault; that the capital city is built from processed bodies of Errata, that the Crown is the true source of all rifts, and so on and so forth. The King will be dethroned, most of his advisors and co-plotting family members imprisoned, and his universally beloved daughter will be the just new Queen, as it typically goes. With that, everyone will be happy, all problems solved, and we can pretend it’s a good end.

Not that I’ll get to see it. What I’ll get to see instead is Wallace, tears in his eyes, hanging over my bleeding body, admonishing himself for [Procrastinating] too long. Or, if I’m lucky, I’ll die before that.

Going over my plans again one last time, I make my way to the last dungeon. Or, well, technically, Gonell is doing it for me. Her real body is already sealed, and I’m just a figment of her copied mind she doesn’t know about while she’s fetching the key, like she’s been planning for a long time.

We’ve been soaring across the ocean for about an hour now, when suddenly, Gonell increases elevation. She flies up and up, still keeping the same direction, but pierces the clouds. I can’t read her mind — that would have required additional specs in a different tree that I didn’t have the time nor intention to go for — so I’m not sure what’s going on. I guess I could just suggest she cut it and not make any detours.

I don’t want to, though.

“Hmm,” she eventually lets out. I can hear her clearly despite the wind howling around us — probably because I inhabit her brain. Nothing else is really happening. She just takes in the scenery, moves up and down a bit, wind furiously tousling her hair and jerking her cloak around. She stretches out her arms to feel the breeze against her fingers, and I feel it too.

I’m getting nervous. Why is she doing this? Why so high up…? Why is she humming to herself? My figurative heart starts pounding, but it’s fine. It should be fine.

It’s fine, because I’ve already won. I have control over everything. And even if something does go wrong, the author will have all the incentives in the world to correct it. At this point, I don’t have to be nervous. I just have to be brutal.

Theora would have stopped me. Not only am I using a mind-controlling Skill on Gonell, no, I’m also still making her experience death, although the surviving version of her won’t know that. It is like someone came up with the shittiest, most demoralising way for me to solve this issue, and to be honest, I’m starting to develop a certain disdain for the author in Dema’s and Theora’s world too, because it is quite ridiculous to make me go through all this just for entertainment.

I sigh. Internally, that is — I’m not literally making Gonell sigh in my stead. I haven’t given her any suggestions and don’t plan to, either. It shouldn’t be necessary.

It’s pointless to shift blame anyway. In the end, the one actually doing all this is me. I am the one who stubbornly wants to prevent her death. I am the one who failed to come up with a different way out. Maybe the morally correct thing to do is to just allow fate to run its course, to let authors do whatever they want and let Gonell die. Maybe fighting against whatever is destined to be is already wrong, and the means don’t matter, especially since I didn’t even discuss any of this with Gonell, nor asked her if she wanted me to. And, truth be told? Even if I could have told her, she probably wouldn’t have wanted for me to sacrifice myself. She would have said no — but I doubt that would have stopped me.

I never said I was a good person. Well, technically I did, after I got summoned, but that was a lie.

“It’s beautiful,” Gonell says. She’s not trying to fight the winds with her words. Probably just talking to herself, in a voice nobody can hear. In a voice nobody is supposed to hear. I already feel bad, but this makes me feel worse. I have no business hearing this. She slows down, and turns around a few times to take it all in.

A breathtaking view of a fluffy, mountainous white landscape, and she makes a little game of jumping from peak to peak for a while, saying “hop” whenever she taps a foot near an area of dense cloud fog to change trajectory.

Why is this making me anxious?

This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Can’t really appreciate it that much right now, but still. Nice thing to see right at the end… I’ll take it. I just wish I wasn’t so worked up about it. Something feels off. I hadn’t expected her to be the kind of person to be sentimental all by herself, but maybe that’s just another thing I never knew about her.

She does this for almost an hour… I think. I don’t have a clock, although it doesn’t feel long. The sun glints above us, the sky is shaded in the most amazing azure I can imagine, with a gradient to a dark blue up above. There’s birds, too, occasionally, when she dips low enough to look at the water, and she flies next to them for a while.

At some point she decides to make the last short stretch onto Penumbra, the island where the dungeon is. If it can even be called an island; it’s incredibly small, just a handful of rocks right in the middle of the sea.

I want to sigh in relief. I mean, obviously, at this point, there was no other place for her to go to. She was just having fun, but…

She steps onto the rock as the waves splash up behind her. A soft tap against stone with the tips of her feet, but she doesn’t keep walking, she just floats up again for a short distance, approaching the entrance — a round cleaved rock formation with a dark opening leading underground. Ominous, and oppressive.

Errata are soluble in water. They don’t dissolve quickly enough to be weak against it in a fight, but they are programmed to avoid it. Thus, dungeons were common on islands; Errata couldn’t, and often didn’t even try, to leave them. Every Erratum that had entered the world through the rifts inside this dungeon was likely still here, save for the occasional ones that adventurous people had managed to dispatch before getting lost in the depths of this place.

Finally, right at the shadowy entrance, Gonell stops. She hovers above it, peering down.

“So, kitten, we’re here now. I’m still wondering what you are trying to accomplish, though.”

Her words make my mind shiver, and I freeze. Both Gonell and I stare down into the endless dark. I can feel her tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. For a brief moment I have the irrational thought that she’s controlling my body instead of me controlling hers.

This is terrifying.

If I could, I’d run away. Who is she even talking to? What? This doesn’t make any sense. Does she have some kind of communication Skill that lets her call home? No, that can’t be, I’d know about it. This isn’t…

“Lostina,” she says, breaking through my frantic thoughts. “I would appreciate an explanation.”