“Ekhem,” Author said.

Mary blinked. She was kneeling on the floor, looking at her pale hands. She couldn't remember parts of what she'd just seen, but she did remember hearing the screams, and the laughs, and heard herself screaming, crying, laughing, her nails tearing at her arms to distract herself, and it was not enough, and...

She blinked again. There wasn't a single mark on her skin.

“As you may've noticed, the issues I'm trying to tackle are... complicated.” He said, and Mary felt the darkness pulse within him with each word. “I'm trying to balance things around here.”

Mary just looked at the man in front of her.

“Before we proceed, could we get the formalities done before you crush the rest of the muffin?”

She looked at her hand, which was still clutching the pastry. But why was it so important?

“So... what should I do exactly?”

“How about you give it to me, and we'll call the quest done? It was a long journey for you, and I don't want to overcomplicate things now. This part is mostly just traditional anyway.”

The Author took the crumbled muffin and started to carefully cut it in half on a table that wasn't there half an eyeblink before.

“You might ask: but are there no other options?” He shrugged. “I would show you a glimpse of my world, but it'd be just a pale reflection - I can never create more than that, as I am not perfect.”

The Author looked at the muffin, which was now divided perfectly into two neat piles of crumbles. He lifted his eyes for a moment, then sighed, and moved a small piece from one to the other. Then the bigger half of the pastry disappeared, while the other one found its way to the man's mouth, piece by piece. Mary tried to blink her inner-shadow sight in surprise, but apparently, that wasn't a thing - the darkness she felt earlier diminished with each bite.

“Well...,” Mary started, then paused. She really shouldn't say the next part, but the Author motioned her to go on, and she couldn't think of anything else, and- “I mean... surely, there could be something you could have done to improve this world, without breaking everything?”

“Oh, I did. I created you. remember?” He sighed through an amused smile as Mary suddenly found her shoes more interesting than all the answers to all the questions she had ever had.

“Oh.”

She thought about everything she did - and everything she failed to do. Of the people she'd failed. All the sacrifices the others had made for her - Hans, Margarett, Mortimer-

“Yeah, about that - don't count him in.”

“Huh?”

“Mortimer. You haven't done wrong by him. He did exactly what he wanted, and he knew the price.”

The Author finished the meal, and the darkness felt more... tame. It was still there, and Mary didn't want to repeat the experience, but she felt good about the change.

Suddenly, they were sitting not in a white room, but on the field of the greenest grass she'd ever seen, sprinkled with fancy fruit trees and overcomplicated flowers. In the distance, some people were having fun - Mary could hear the laughter interweaving with cheerful talks. Others were simply walking around, taking the time to smell the plants, pet the rabbits and so on.

And there he was - the boy she'd failed the most. He had no eyes floating around him, but those on his face were clearly pure black even from this distance.

Author sighed.

“Mary, for my sake, please listen for once. He's here, happier than he could have ever been back among the living. He did well, and he doesn't regret the choices he'd made.”

“Can I talk to him?”

“Not now. Maybe later, if you'll really want to - the gates of the afterlife aren't shut particularly tightly, as you might have noticed along the way. But I won't bring him back myself - as far as I'm concerned, he already completed his job, and I won't demand more of him now. Still, if you want to interrupt his retirement, that's between the two of you.”

“I... understand,” Mary said.

“That isn't to say that you hadn't wronged anyone, though.”

The scenery shifted again. They were back in the Academy, in front of the cathedral. The battle was still going on - only, it seemed to be taking a breather at the moment. The exploding rockets were frozen in the air next to Paolo - wow, Mary wished she had a camera or something to capture that facial expression forever. The bull was also frozen mid-roar as it tried to reach the boy not only with its projectiles but also with horns.

Everything seemed clearer in this snapshot, as if she'd always had terrible sight and only wore glasses now for the first time in her life. So much so that she managed to get a look at the thing stuck to the bull's neck - and it wasn't just a mass of dark goo, it had a too familiar face of Mary's least favourite clerk stuck in the middle of the fat.

But the Author wasn't looking at Paolo, nor even the bull - he was walking towards a scattered pile of steel and machine parts. Her SJW.

“Hello, Mossie,” he said to the wreckage. The largest chunk was partially melted, and one of the reflectors was missing. The opening was showing a little crystal pulsing with orange light. Wait. It wasn't frozen?

“I'm sorry,” Marry said, kneeling on the sand. Only recently did she realise how much she had misunderstood the little robot.

“You know, I usually try to respect the Death. Things get messy really quickly when you don't. However...,” he trailed off, tilting his head to the side. “But well, until the light truly goes off, he's not really dead so let's pretend it works, shall we? And unlike Mortimer, you two hadn't really reached much of your potential, had you?”

Dared she hope?

“Rise and grow,” the Author commanded.

The parts started to rise from the sand, leaving trails of frozen grains hanging in the air. The pieces weren't just rearranging themselves, some of them were melting, and the figure composing in the air wasn't entirely that of Mary's robot - it looked much more humanoid-ish, as the arms sprouting from the UFO got matched with a tiny torso and legs. The dinnerplate-shaped head was still slightly oversized for the new body, even with no mini-printer in the new design. Finally, it grew a pair of tiny little wings and completed its metamorphosis into a hand-sized metal pixie. A tiny pixie knight - it was much more angular and edgy than before, but it didn't seem bothered. It zipped onto Mary's shoulder as soon as it finished forming. It even had a tiny shield and an even tinier sword.

“Treat him better next time, would you? He might have gotten a few things wrong here and there, but he just tried to help.”

“But was he so mean all that time, giving me all those fines and stuff?” Mary said as she looked at her upgraded friend.

“Bip. I'm sorry. Bip,” the robot whimpered into her ear.

“Come on, he was just- you know what? How about you figure this one thing for yourself, would you?”

They were back in the room, which was just as white as before, but maybe a bit more spinning. Mary was not used to that kind of jumping around.

“Well, I think it's time. Of course, there's really no time, but there might be one in a sense. Still, it is.”

“Ekhm... what?”

“You can't stay here forever. You have a world to save... or doom, it's your choice. In either case, it'll surely deserve a whole new story. Just two more things for now.”

A tiny hologram of an altar appeared above his hand, with a giant red arrow pointing to a specific spot.

“There's a coin slot here. Use this, and have fun.” He flicked a coin at Mary, and she immediately recognized its kind - it was like those rainbow coins that Arthur used on the camp. Only this one, instead of glinting in a myriad of all the colours, sparkled in two myriads of just shades of black.

“And... the other thing?”

The man looked at her with just the tiniest bit sad smile.

“Sure, you have flaws and so on, but I'm not perfect either. Don't be too hard on yourself. I just want you to always know how proud of you I am. You did well.”

He embraced her in a fatherly hug, and she felt the warmth of his body embracing the coldness of hers. She probably cried, but it didn't matter. At that moment, nothing mattered. And yet, everything did. She couldn't tell how long it lasted, but she almost felt like drawing breath again. Almost.

“And now go,” he finally whispered.

And Mary found herself in the cathedral again.

“Wait,” she called, but the only answer she got was a couple of explosions ringing all over the backyard.

Mary ran to the obsidian altar, letting the shadows disintegrate unused benches on her way. No one else used this place anyway. She swiped the books covering it away, wincing slightly at the disrespect. But there it was, the coin slot.

She put the coin in.

The coin clinked three times on its way down. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Mary was getting worried she'd somehow managed to get something wrong, and the background explosions didn't help.

And then, the entire cathedral started shaking. The benches collapsed into trapdoors, including those already broken by time. The wind-operated organs began to play a loud, solemn march as the building started breaking into pieces, which rearranged themselves on the fly. There were gears and chains made of stone and metal, moving like pieces of the same, well-oiled, life-long-guaranteed-by-the-producer machine.

Mary held on to the altar as the block she stood upon lifted her high into the air, then moved her to a room that looked more and more like a command center with every second, as the stained glass windows began working as the monitors. The rumble was surely loud enough to draw the attention of the battle participants, but no one seemed to attack its source at the moment.

Finally, the rumble settled on one velocity, and the altar sprouted a joystick and three buttons - red, green and blue. Above it, another thingy opened and revealed two post-it notes written in almost medical-level scribble. First said “Good luck”. The second - “Have fun”.

Mary put her hands on the controls, and the shadows around her skin connected to something in the machine. She felt her mind melting into the greater consciousness, and she felt the entire building as if it was her body. Except, it was no longer a building. The heroine saw, somehow from behind and above, a freaking four-legged, long-snouted chubby robot. Some of its features were deformed by uneven stone and spires, but she'd recognize the holy animal anywhere - she was driving a freaking capybara.

The machine opened its mouth, and a shockwave of creepy whispers shook the entire Academy. This finally got the attention of the bull and its rider, which finally let stunned Paolo crash back to the ground.

The golden statue charged at Mary's vehicle, but against a target of twice its own size, the beast was way less effective. Tanuor came to a quick stop as its horns connected with the capybara's inanimate fur - and broke.

Mary looked down at the hated pair before her and thought a single world - fire.

The mechanical rodent let out a breath of pure darkness, which slowly enveloped the front half of the bull. Mary heard a single, terrifyingly-long scream as the rider melted along with its mount one cell at a time.

The twitching rear half of the former Academy mascot hit the ground hard and presented its anatomical perfection for the entire world to see.

It didn't even take a full minute.

It took most of the night to get everything taken care of. Well, everything that absolutely needed to be taken care of three moments ago.

Most of the fighting stopped once it became clear who won. Arthur's men quickly took over the key infrastructure under the Pri's judging eye. Bromman promised to keep an eye on him, which was only as reassuring as Mary could force herself to trust her mentor after all that had happened. So, around 60%.

Hans and Margaret promised to get some paladins and throw Mary a party the next afternoon - which could be good, but could also be terrible. She wasn't exactly overdosing on hope.

But finally, she found herself sitting on the head of the new Academy's mascot, with just Paolo and Mossie by her side. They looked at the slowly brightening pre-dawn sky.

“So...,” Paolo started. “You've really met Him? And he gave Mossie of all things a makeover?”

Mary nodded silently.

“I mean... don't get me wrong, but...” Paolo trailed off.

“It doesn't quite feel right?”

“Yeah. That.”

Mary glanced at her SJW, who just looked back at her. Then she sighed.

“I guess I'll have to get used to it.”

She looked down, and her eyes fell upon a small, yellow button. She blinked, but the thing didn't disappear. Quite the opposite, a post-it appeared just next to it. “Click me.”

She did, and a lid popped up next to it, revealing a small plate and another post-it - “Eat me.” There, on a plastic plate, she saw a crumbled half of a familiar muffin.

“Whoa. Is it...?”

“I think so.” Mary looked at the remains of the pastry. After all... why not. She offered a piece to Paolo, but he wouldn't take more than a single crumb no matter how hard she tried to convince him.

His loss. And wow, what a loss it was. The muffin contained more than just a taste she could feel even in her current form. There was the warmth of a friend's hug, a salty sting of tears wept over those who left, the sweetness of victory, and the spicy undertone of a joke... She felt them all flowing through her like a breath of fresh air filling her lungs after coming out of a dusty dungeon.

And when she finished the last bit, the first ray of sunshine broke over the horizon and painted a golden dot on her chest. A chest, where an almost forgotten beat had started to play again.

“Bip, ekhm,” Mossie said in a familiar, only way more fluent voice. “You know you still have to pay all those fines, right?”

“WHAT?”