Chapter 87: The New Story

"U-Uh, what are you two waiting for??? Help me put it back!" Serena hissed.

I was still on my knees. The Manuscript confirmed my worst fears.

New Canon Established

[... Shit.]

Lily was looking at the boulder like it was a dinner plate that had fallen and shattered. She started trying to put it back together.

"Help me out! U-Use your ice magic or something!" Lily yelled, and Serena, unable to separate the sword from her hand, started trying to put the boulder back together with her one free hand.

So, this was going to have some ramifications. The original story was, at this point, completely unsalvageable.

Originally, Serena was the villainess of the tale. Lily’s arc revolved around hating her. Serena’s revolved around being jealous of the boy toys orbiting the commoner she despised. And that led to a final battle where Serena was handed a brutal, awful death, before Lily and her harem went up against the Calamity Queen.

Everything that had happened up to this point could be salvaged in one way or another. Cassian and Aldric hadn’t shown any interest in Lily, but she could win their hearts with some helpful wingmanning. Lily hadn’t won the Duel Festival, and yet she ended up with the Champion’s Benediction anyway because I convinced the winner to hand it over. It wasn’t the same exact story I’d written, but the key beats were there.

Now, however, a beat had just shattered in a way that could not be fixed. Ever. Dawnlight, the most unsubtly named weapon ever, in the history of trashy webnovels, had ended up in the hands of the story’s main rival. And, why couldn’t she just hand it to Lily? Well...

"Serena," I said.

"We’re busy!"

I sighed.

"Ask the sword to disappear."

"What?" She looked over at me, baffled.

"Just do it. In your head."

She stared at me for a little while longer, but then, she did as I asked.

And the sword disappeared, turning into dust that was swept away by the wind.

"What just happened!?"

I got up and tried to explain.

"That sword has been waiting for someone as powerful as its previous owner to find it. You showed up and now, when you touched it, it decided that you were good enough. Congrats, that thing is yours now."

"But I don’t want it anymore!" Serena yelled back, her face red.

"Yeah, I don’t think the sword cares."

---

We ran away after that.

The following day, the announcement rang out throughout the shrine and the panic was almost comical. The sword had been stolen. They checked us. All of us, one by one, were patted down and had all our containers inspected in case we’d been hiding it. But, naturally, they didn’t find anything, because the damn thing was inside Serena.

So they came to the natural conclusion: some extremely powerful group must have subdued all the guards and left with the blade. The guards actually supported that theory. None of them wanted to admit that the sword had been rather easily stolen from them right under their noses, so they faked wounds on their bodies to solidify the whole "someone strong came and took it" premise. I could tell because people we passed by, like the pair who’d been discussing my tits, had bruises and superficial scratches, and were now talking about how they’d been valiantly taken down by overwhelming forces.

And the whole time, I was trying to put together the new continuity.

Here’s what I had.

Dawnlight killed the Calamity Queen once already. Fifteen-year-old me needed a reason the final battle was winnable and "there’s a special sword Lily happens to be wielding" was as far as I got in the four hours I spent on the ending. Lily was supposed to pull it out of a rock, carry it for six arcs, and put it through the Queen’s chest while her harem held the line.

So the sword has to be at that battle.

Which means Serena has to be there.

[I have to keep her alive for however long it takes for the Calamity Queen to show, and then I have to walk her into final battle, alongside Lily.]

That was the whole problem.

Everything I had left on the schedule was built for Lily. The training montages, the beach trip that exists so Lily gets carried out of the surf by whoever she’s leaning toward. The cultural festival where Lily gets stuck running a stall with a boy. The ballroom dance, the hot springs, the sports festival, the camping trip, the maid café, the monster attack, the ball at the end of the year. Every single one of them is a machine with one seat in it.

Now there had to be two.

[So the beach episode now includes Serena. The dance includes Serena. The camping trip includes Serena, and she has to come out of all of it liking the people she’s standing next to enough to die for them, which, at current rates, is going to take me the rest of my natural life.]

I should have been furious.

I really should have. I’d spent two weeks in this province on a sword the wrong person got, I’d lost a canon almost-kiss in a hallway, I’d been strangled twice, a moth nearly dissolved me, and the payoff for all of it was a second full-time heroine bolted onto a schedule that was already falling apart.

But I looked up the road, and I couldn’t do it.

Lily and Serena were walking ahead of me.

They were together, in step, with Lily’s bag over her own shoulder and Serena’s hands behind her back, and Lily was saying something, and Serena was listening to it.

Then Serena laughed.

It wasn’t a big one. It was a short breath out of her nose and a thing her mouth did at one corner, and it was gone in a second, but I saw it happen, and I have to tell you that I wrote that woman as a wall of ice with a hairstyle. Four hundred pages and she never once looked at anyone the way she was looking at the girl next to her right then. Warm. Kind.

I sighed.

[... That actually feels nice. I’m seeing two of my beloved OCs smile and chat with one another. How could I possibly be mad?]

I sped up a little so I could keep watching without being obvious about it.

"There you are." Marisol came in from my left and matched my pace without asking. She’d redone her hair, and she looked entirely too well-rested for someone who’d hit the floor of a dining hall face first. "So? Was it handled?"

"It was handled."

"Handled how?"

"Handled thoroughly. Handled in a way that makes any further questions a burden on both of us." I kept my eyes on the road. "You did good work in there. I’ve never seen a woman go down that hard on purpose."

"I hit the leg of the table. I have an actual bruise, and if anyone asks about it, that bruise is a war wound and I want it treated with respect." She looked me over. "You’re limping."

"I lifted something heavy."

She let that go, which was generous of her, and for about thirty seconds we just walked. The line of students ahead of us was starting to bunch up near the gate where the coaches were being loaded, and somebody’s trunk had already fallen off a cart.

"So what’s next?" Marisol said.

Before I could stop myself, my mouth replied:

"Killing the Calamity Queen."

She laughed.

It was a great laugh, honestly. She actually put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself, and she kept going for a good four or five seconds, and a few people turned around.

"That’s good. That’s very good." She wiped under one eye with a knuckle. "You do that. You have been keeping everything so close to your chest since the day I met you, and I’ve made my peace with it, because a woman running an operation this large can’t brief everyone at once. I understand my position. I’m an asset. Assets get told on a need-to-know basis." She leaned in, up onto her toes, and put her mouth right next to my ear. "Or, we could just fuck."

"... In the coach?"

"There are eleven people in the coach."

"So that’s a no on the coach?"

"That’s a later," she said, and dropped back onto her heels, and walked off toward the carts like she hadn’t said anything at all.

Up at the gate, the warden was making another speech.

Half the first-years had already stopped listening. Fenna was standing near the front with my bag on her shoulder, which I had not asked her to carry, and eleven pears in a cloth sack, which I had asked her about and regretted. Odette was reading while walking and had drifted about six feet off the path. Reindl was crying a little, because we were leaving somewhere that looked pretty, and that’s enough for Reindl. Sabine was being chatted up by some wolf girl.

And Lily was at the coach door, holding it open, looking back down the road for me.

Serena was standing next to her.

[Alright,] I thought. [New book entirely. Let’s do this.]

I jogged up to them.