“It wasn’t something I could have offered sooner,” Atria said. She leaned forward, pressing her fingers together under her chin. “For what it’s worth, I apologize to all of you. All I knew was that you were fleeing somebody or something very powerful, and that you were concealing something. Until I could determine the nature of what you were concealing, I had to operate on the assumption that a full interrogation would become necessary. Now I know that it isn’t.” She stood, walked over to where Aquila was sitting, knelt in front of her and put her hand on Aquila’s. “Please, help me protect my world. I just spent fourteen years winning a war against the Paladin Legion, and if there’s some new threat, I need to know everything I can about it and its nature. And I think the fact that there is some other version of me who fought a war on another world is relevant. The responsibility for being able to handle what you say is mine and mine alone.”

    Aquila looked at her and nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll tell you everything. You, your war, this place, it’s all a story created by people on another world. We call them ‘hub worlds’ – they’re where the gods of creation live. There are many hub worlds, and stories and story worlds are duplicated sometimes. And people like us, from the story worlds, can fall through the information streams that create those worlds and maintain their stories into the hub worlds, and this sometimes causes wars to happen between creations. The other you was from another hub world’s version of your story, and she led one of the sides of the war on that world.”

    Atria stared at her in shock. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again. Then she stood, walked back to her chair and sat down in it, still staring at Aquila.

    Aquila shared a concerned glance with Kasumi. “Is she okay?” Kasumi asked.

    Atria raised her hand, cocked her head, and then said, “Right, that wasn’t even close to what I expected you to say. I thought you were going to tell me we were all in a simulation, or something like that.”

    “I know it’s unbelievable,” Natsuki offered. “But, it’s true.”

    “Oh, I believe you,” Atria said. “Your body language would tell me if you were lying. Real or not, you believe it’s true. I’m just not sure what to do with this.”

    “There are story worlds based on video games,” Yukari added. “Those could be called simulations. Some of the best mech racing I’ve done was in video game worlds.”

    “Is this one of those?” Atria asked.

    Aquila shook her head. “It’s a light novel or anime, if I had to guess.”

    “I see,” Atria said, then blinked and stared at Yukari. “Sorry, did you say mech racing?”

    Yukari grinned. “Oh yes! I’ve got a Class 3 racing license.” She reached into the inside pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a laminated card with her picture on it, showing it to Atria. “See?”

    “There are places where people use mechs for racing,” Atria muttered. “That’s nice, I guess.”

    “Did we break the cool scary lady?” Yukari asked Sayori under her breath.

    “I’ll be fine,” Atria declared. “I’m just...processing...all of this. Also, please don’t call me that.”

    “Take your time,” Aquila said. “It always takes a while for our kind to wrap their brains around this. There’s usually a pretty severe existential crisis.”

    “So you three,” she said, pointing at Aquila, Kasumi, and Cap, “rescued you four from another story?”

    “That’s true,” Kasumi said. “They were in really rough shape when we got there.”

    “We were the harem in a high school harem comedy,” Sayori stated. “It was pretty bad.” She glanced at Natsuki. “A lot of...groping.”

    “You were being sexually assaulted?” Atria asked.

    “I was, but it was more complicated than that,” Natsuki replied. “It’s more like the story was forcing us to compete over the protagonist, and he kept tripping and falling on my chest...by accident. The others didn’t have to worry about the whole tripping and falling part.”

    Atria gave her a hard look. “That doesn’t sound very accidental to me. Okay, I think I’m getting a grasp on this. So, who creates these story worlds we’re all living in?”

    “We’re just people,” Kasumi said. “Unless a war between creations breaks out on our world, we don’t even know that what we create can become real somewhere.”

    Atria blinked and stared at Kasumi. “You’re one of them? And you’re travelling in these story worlds?”

    “She created me,” Aquila said. “She can’t go back to her world – it will try to erase her if she does.”

    “I jumped off a building and killed myself,” Kasumi explained. “Aquila came to find me and brought me back with a miracle. My world doesn’t allow people to come back to life like that.”

    Atria gave Kasumi a stunned look. “I think I’m going to need another couple of minutes to deal with that...”

    “Now we’ve broken her,” Sayori whispered to Yukari.

    “I told you, I’ll be fine,” Atria declared, glaring at Sayori. “This is just a lot to take in.” She turned to Kasumi. “There’s around a billion people living on this world. Almost three hundred million were touched by the war against the Paladin Legion. And you’re telling me that a single person, like you, created every one of them, including me?”

    “It’s not quite like that,” Aquila explained. “You’re the hero of this story world. Your creator created you, and the people and places you interacted with. The rest was extrapolated by the information stream when it created your world. The best way to think of it is as the story being the DNA of this world, and the information stream using that to create everybody and everything in it.”

    “Including all of its history,” Atria said.

    Aquila nodded. “Yes.”

    Atria leaned forward, looking at Aquila. “You said that you led a war on one of these hub worlds. Was that around Kasumi?”

    “Yes,” Aquila said, staring at her hands. “I was the villain of my war, and I hurt a lot of people. I’m not proud of any of it, and I know the things I did aren’t forgivable. But, I did atone for it – I helped save far more people than I ever hurt.”

    “That’s not nothing,” Atria said. “So, you led this war on Kasumi’s world. How powerful did you have to be to do that?”

    Aquila swallowed, still staring at her hands. “I was...I was basically a god of destruction. I’m connected to an information stream. That gives me the power to alter reality in the story worlds. I can do that to a much lesser degree in the hub worlds.”

    “Aquila’s powerful enough to create a world for us,” Kasumi added. “That’s where we lived for five years before we met Cap and started travelling.”

    “And this person who is chasing you,” Atria said. “He’s powerful enough that you can’t beat him?”

    Aquila nodded. “I read his character description. He’s several times more powerful than I am. The only advantage I have is that he has to travel along the information streams, while I can make my own way between story worlds. If he ever corners me, I’m...I’m...” She looked at her hands again. “His name is Balthazar. He’s connected to an information stream too.”

    Atria gave her a kind smile. “I get the picture.” She leaned back and reached into her messenger bag, pulling out a pad of paper and pen and resting them on her lap. “I’m going to make a deduction, and I want you to tell me if I’m right. You have the ability to create a world and wait the war out there, but that won’t protect you from this Balthazar person. So, you have to run away instead.”

    “We’re using a pair of dice to randomize our direction and distance,” Kasumi said. “That way, he can’t get ahead of us and ambush us again.”

    “I’ll take that to mean I’m correct,” Atria said. “What is Balthazar’s operational goal?”

    “He’s trying to make some of the story worlds collide with their hub world,” Aquila replied. “When that happens, the explosion will take out this entire galaxy of story worlds.”

    Atria nodded, her expression becoming calculating. “I see. So, this Balthazar person represents a direct threat to my world. Are there people fighting him on the ‘hub world’ that created this one?”

    “By now, yes,” Aquila said. “There should be an organized resistance, probably working with the local military. I think the place most of these wars happen is in a country called Japan, so the army is called the Japanese Self-Defence Force.”

    “And you’ve seen a number of these wars?”

    “I got caught in my own information stream about four years ago. I saw the entire multiverse, and most of the wars on the hub worlds. The side protecting the creators or their world is pretty much always led by a mage and a magical knight or mech pilot. The magical knight or mech pilot almost never survives. The other you, the one I had tea with, was rather unique – she lived through her war.”

    Atria nodded. “Somebody must have taken her place.”

    “That’s what she told me had happened,” Aquila said.

    “And this Balthazar, you said you had read his ‘character description’. I take it this means you know all of his capabilities?”

    “Yes, I do,” Aquila replied.

    “And if this war is going to be won, it will be won on the hub world?”

    Aquila nodded.

    “And the people fighting him on this hub world, do they have this information?” Atria asked.

    Aquila shook her head. “It takes somebody like me to be able to read a character description at all. They won’t have any way of knowing it.”

    “So, they’re going to need it,” Atria said. She handed the pad and pen to Aquila. “I want you to write down everything you know about Balthazar, in a language that those on the hub world can read.”

    Aquila nodded and started writing.

    Atria reached into her breast pocket and pulled out a small radio. “Comms, this is Silverspear. I’m in sector 17C of refugee camp five, and I’m going to need a messenger here ASAP.” Then she put the radio back and took a small notebook and pen out of her other breast pocket, and began writing something on it.

    Cap leaned forward. “Colonel, I know what you’re thinking of doing, but you have to know that it’s probably a one-way trip. If you’re not here when the information stream updates the story, it will just create a replacement of you who never left. And if you come back after you’ve been replaced, the next information stream update will probably erase one of you...most likely the version of you who left. If you ask us to take you there–”

    “Captain, I am an officer of the Hyperborean Army,” Atria said. “The oath I took was to protect refugees, not send them into harm’s way. I am going to ask Aquila to send me there, which I’m fairly sure is within her abilities. What happens after that is my responsibility. Your group may continue on its way out of the war zone, with my blessings and best wishes.” She signed the piece of paper she was writing on, tore it off and pressed it behind the pad, and started writing again. “Besides, I just won my war, Prometheus and I had our tender moment, and if my story is anything like the adventure novels I read in my downtime, all that’s left is an epilogue set months or years in the future. So, I’m guessing I’ve got more time to find my way home than most.” She signed the page she was writing on and tore it out of the pad, and then glanced at Aquila, who was on her third page. “Make sure you include your best estimate of how long we have to stop him.”

    Aquila finished writing and handed the notepad and pen back to Atria. “I think that’s all of it. You need to know that if I can’t beat him, the odds of you succeeding are...almost non-existent.”

    Atria gave her a warm smile. “They said the Paladin Legion couldn’t be defeated, and now here we are. There’s more than one way to win a war than a straight-up fight. You worry about getting your people to safety. I’ll worry about figuring out how to stop Balthazar.”

    A soldier in a green uniform with a messenger bag of his own jogged up to Atria and saluted. “Oh, good,” Atria said, folding the notes she had written in half and handing them to him with the pad Aquila had been writing in. “Corporal, I need you to take an electronic copy of these pages and these two notes to Colonel Prometheus Goldensword, with my complements. Give me that pad back once you have finished taking your copy.”

    As Aquila watched, the corporal ran a small device over each page she had written, and then handed the pad back to Atria. Then he saluted Atria and jogged away.

    Atria slipped the strap of the messenger bag over her shoulder and dropped the pad into it. Then she stood and turned to Aquila. “So, now I need you to send me to the hub world so that I can deliver this intelligence and join the fight. I take it they speak the same language I do?”

    Aquila nodded and stood. “They call it Japanese. Are you sure you don’t want me to send you there with your mech?”

    “They’d have to put Volandpanzer back together first,” Atria said. “I ended my part of the battle on foot. It’s okay, I’ve had worse.”

    “What are you going to do once you get there?” Cap asked.

    Atria grinned. “I’m planning to get directions to the nearest military base, show up at the front gate, and ask to speak to whoever is in charge. Always best to keep things simple.”

    “Are you sure you want to do this?” Aquila said. “I don’t like sending people to their deaths.”

    Atria sighed and put a reassuring hand on Aquila’s shoulder. “You’re not. You’re sending me to deliver the vital intelligence that will be needed for any victory to happen. I’ve got lots of reasons to survive and get back here. I will make it through this alive.”

    Aquila nodded. “Okay. Let me know when you’re ready.”

    “You get your people to safety,” Atria said, checking her sword, gun, bag, and then straightening up. “I’m ready. Good luck to you.”

    “And to you,” Aquila said, motioning at Atria. Atria disappeared in a rushing of air into the space she left behind.

    “That...was an experience,” Yuri said. “Let’s never have a conversation like that again.”

    “Do you think she’s got a chance?” Cap asked.

    Aquila sat back down and rubbed her temples. “I don’t think she has any more chance of beating him than we do. But, she has the right to make the attempt.”

    “If we’re done in this world,” Yuri said, “can Kasumi please roll the dice so we can get the hell out of here?”

NEXT: “Inferno”