I… wasn’t aware that that had happened. “Do you mean when I offered you a copy of the eel’s core? There should’ve been a message–”

Jun cut me off with a wave of her hand, then pressed it back under her armpit for warmth. “That’s not what I mean. Well, yeah, I did see the notification, but something told me to accept it. Some messages that didn’t look like any others I’d seen.”

My mind instantly went to the all-caps messages that The End used to communicate with me. Had it messaged Jun to get her to accept the eel’s core? I set my mouth in a thin line; I needed to be sure before I said anything. I’d been too loose with my assumptions so far, and they had almost gotten me in trouble quite a few times.

“What did they look like?”

Jun shivered and sighed at the same time, then turned away from me and kept walking. “They were in a strange font that I’d never seen before. Like they’d been scratched into my interface instead of written on it, and every single one of them was a designator.”

“I don’t know what that is.” I pointed out.

“Right. Right.” Jun nodded to herself. “You think I’d know to explain everything by now. Alright. A designator is what we use to show that a new sentence is starting, and what emotion the sentence is supposed to be read with. They’re little shapes that you put over a symbol, like an ‘x’ or a triangle pointing in one of the four main directions.”

“So they’re a combination of capital letters and punctuation marks.” I said slowly. That sounded like the Staura equivalent of The End speaking to me solely in capital letters. “Was there anything before the messages? Like, a symbol or a mark that’s not supposed to go there?”

“I don’t know what capital letters of punctuation marks are.” Jun reminded me. “Remember that I don’t know anything about humans either. But… yeah. There were two slanted lines before each sentence for some reason.” She narrowed her eyes once again. “You do know something about this.”

I… I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this. “Yeah. I do.”

“Is it because of your… old life?” Jun asked.

“Well, I mean, technically yeah.” I answered. “But I’m not sure how much I can really say. There’s some stuff in the real answer that might put both of us in danger, or it might be completely benign. I… I guess I could just ask.”

Jun frowned at me again. “Ask what? Or ask who?”

“Both, I think.” I said. “Give me a second. I’ll ask it how much I can say.”

“Alright, I guess.” Jun said with a shake of her head, looking out over the edge of the boat that didn’t have any buildings on it, just a flat stretch of rocky land with far too many tracks. “If it helped me get the core, it can’t be all that bad.”

I nodded to myself, then switched over to directly contacting The End. {So how much–}

//AS MUCH AS YOU YOURSELF ARE COMFORTABLE WITH.

//BUT KNOW THAT WHATEVER YOU SAY, OKERIA WILL OVERHEAR.

//IT WOULD BE FAR SAFER TO CONVERSE VIA SYSTEM MESSAGES, AS PERSEPHONIA DID FOR HER LAST WORDS.

Okay, so apparently my being connected to The End wasn’t some world-shattering secret that would cause Jun to hate me. Or maybe it was, and The End was telling me that it was my choice to bring that evil into the world. It had saved me and led me in the right direction, but it was never to make me safe. It was to try and get the absolute best result from whatever I found myself in the middle of.

Even if it didn’t work out, like with Nia. I still wasn’t sure how the hell I was supposed to save her if Endra was always going to burst out of her back like something from a horror movie, but I didn’t doubt that there was the possibility that I could’ve. I nodded to myself with the resolve to tell Jun everything I knew, from how The End spoke to me through error messages to what its role had been in the end of my world, but one last error message brought my train of thought to a screeching halt.

//YOU ARE MY CHOSEN, AND I TRUST YOUR JUDGMENT.

I gaped at those words for far too long, the ramifications of the implications dancing about in my mind until they settled on absolutely fucking nothing. “What the absolute fuck?!” I said a little too loud, startling Jun enough to make her jump and call her armor. “There’s no fucking way. There’s no FUCKING WAY! WHAT THE FUCK?!?”

“What?! What?!” Jun said in a panic, grabbing my arm as I tried to lift it to my face. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What happened? Are you okay? Can I help?”

“I… no. I don’t think you can help.” I said, grabbing my head with both hands and forcing myself to stare down at the rocky surface of the boat. This couldn’t be happening. The chosen had stolen everything from me. They’d declared war on the little town that we lived in for a few weeks. And then they’d killed Nia. Well, that last one was more on the Embodiment herself, but close enough.

I couldn’t be one of them. I… I was better than that. Wasn’t I?

“Seb?” Jun asked worriedly, and I ignored her. I felt two more hands join my own, and Jun slowly but forcefully made me raise my head to look at her. “I’m here to help. What do you need me to do? Do we need to… uh, ‘deal with’ Okeria? Because we can get the hazard to kick us out and pray to the skies that we meet my Rootia before Endra or Okeria kill us…”

Jun kept rambling while I just stared at her in surprise. She trusted me so damn much. I tensed my shoulders and pulled my hands from my helmet, leaving Jun clasping my hands between us while she slowly ran out of things to say.

How much could it hurt to reciprocate that trust? I opened my interface with a thought and swiped over to a mostly blank screen that had a grand total of three names on it; The End, Juniper Keratily, and Persephonia Persephonia. That last one had been greyed out, her final message to me still sitting there waiting for me to open it. I had to deal with that next, but for right now, Jun came first.

I mentally pressed on Jun’s name, and an empty box appeared under it. {Don’t say any of what I’m about to tell you out loud.} I thought, the words appearing as plain text as I went. {Nobody else can know what I’m about to tell you.}

The message shrunk into a much smaller rectangle as I sent it to Jun, who tilted her head to the side and let go of my hands to swipe through the air. I gave her what I thought was enough time to get to and read my very short message, then began mentally typing another.

{I know exactly what gave me my core. It said that it wasn’t an Embodiment, but now I’m not so sure. It called itself The End, and it’s been talking to me through error messages ever since Tarel stole my core to give to his own chosen.} I paused, not quite ready to send the message yet, and sucked in a short breath. Jun had taken off her helmet once more, and was looking at me expectantly and worriedly at the same time. I needed to rip the bandage off as fast as possible and hope that expression didn’t turn to fear or hatred. {Apparently I’m The End’s chosen.}

Send.

I watched with terrified anticipation as Jun’s eyes lit up at the new message. She first showed surprise, then confusion, then something I couldn’t quite place. It looked somewhat like relief, but that couldn’t be right. Nobody would be relieved that I’d just outed myself as the chosen of something that called itself ‘The End’.

A message greeted me with my answer. {I didn’t know The End was actually real. Sure, I’ve heard stories, but I always thought they were just that; stories. Is it as terrifying as the stories make it out to be? Did you meet Flux and Stagnation too? Oh, what kind of powers did it give you when it made you it’s chosen? Or was the core everything it gave you, because if that’s all it gave you, I don’t think you got a very good deal.}

I was halfway through reading when an error message popped up in the middle of everything.

//I THOUGHT IT WAS A FAIRLY GOOD DEAL.

//WAS IT NOT A GOOD DEAL?

//DO EMBODIMENTS GIVE THEIR CHOSEN MORE THAN I HAVE GIVEN YOU?

//…I MUST ASK FLUX AND STAGNATION.

//THEY’LL KNOW WHAT A PROPER DEAL ENTAILS.

…Was The End sulking at Jun’s message? No, something as powerful as it wouldn’t do that. I had to be misinterpreting. And who the hell were Flux and Stagnation?

“I can answer… two of those questions.” I laughed. Jun frowned at me and covered her mouth with one hand, then pressed the other over where my mouth was under my helmet. I knew from experience when I was being told to shut up.

{The End wasn’t all that terrifying; the things that came before it were way scarier. It looked exactly like me the first time I saw it, but then it just looked like a bunch of cloth and metal that was vaguely person-like. No, I didn’t meet Flux or Stagnation, whatever that means. And I think the core is all it gave me, but the core also changed a lot of my system.}

Jun read through everything with her lips pursed, then nodded when she finished and started typing out an answer. {I don’t know much about what it means to be chosen, since so much was kept secret from me back home, but maybe Okeria knows? You could ask him with the excuse about learning about Endra and Nia if you wanted to?}

{Yeah, that’s a good idea. After we deal with this, I have a whole lot of questions. And something else to show you. Okeria already knows, so we don’t have to be quiet.}

I still shot a look back, as though Endra would appear in response to my thoughts, but the ship didn’t move and no new sounds appeared. I sighed and reached into my inventory, then gently kneeled down to place Nia’s body on the deck of the ship as it appeared.

Jun was quiet as she took in Nia’s disfigured corpse. Disgust and anger warred for space on her face at the beginning, but sadness eventually reigned. She bent down with me and gently put a hand over Nia’s own.

“Thank you for everything.” She whispered, bringing the back of Nia’s hand to her chest and placing it over her heart. “We will remember you, even if nobody else will.” She closed her eyes and said a prayer in a language I didn’t understand, a first for me in this new world, then looked in my eyes with grim determination.

“Did Endra take Nia’s core?”