With some hesitation Kiara sat on my throne. I exhaled and began my story. I told her everything from the start. The zombie queen’s visit. The time bomb. The boys. Why staying in the village was important for me. I was careful to mention that I had maintained my distance from the queen. Kiara took in all the information in silence, and after I was done, I studied her, waiting for her reaction.

Kiara didn’t speak anything for a long time, and the racket of birds outside filled the void. Finally, she opened her mouth.

“So, what do you plan to do next?”

“I was thinking of going to the town, maybe I could find some clues to reverse the effects of the time bomb,” I said.

“And if you cannot do so?”

“Well, I can assure you that I have no plans of living with the Zombie queen forever, if that’s what you are worried about.”

Kiara put an arm around me. She tenderly caressed my face where she had earlier hit me.

“Our troubles will never get over, will they?” she whispered. “Every time I think that maybe we can finally live in peace, something happens and everything changes .”

“Maybe troubles are never meant to get over,” I said. “Maybe troubles make up life. Troubles are good.” Yes, I was being too philosophical in my effort to have a positive outlook on my situation, but you cannot deny that what I was speaking was true.

Kiara sighed, but then she became rigid and drew away from me.

“What?” I said.

“If you have lost all your powers, then what about me?”

I hadn’t thought about that. Like me, Kiara had directly come from the real world, not through a pod. She had been away when the bomb had exploded. So was she affected by it or not?

“Check your stats,” I said impatiently.

“They are all there,” Kiara said after a quick review of her abilities. “The bomb has not affected me.”

“See? Everything isn’t as bad as we thought,” I said to her. “Your powers will be useful for us.”

“But like you I will require evilese to stay neutral,” Kiara said.

“I can get some for you from the zombies, it shouldn’t be hard—”

I cut myself short when a sound came from the first floor of the palace.

“What was that?” Kiara said.

I strained my ears. Somebody was moving about above.

“Want to check it out?” I said.

“Let me go first, you are powerless like a baby,” Kiara mocked me, wiggling her fingers.

I grimaced.

“You don’t need to remind me of that all the time. And remember, we are neutral ones, we have no enemies.”

It was on tip toe that the two of us stole up the steps. The sound was coming from the king’s chamber.

The door was ajar. There was somebody inside.

“Who are you?” Kiaras asked as she entered the room, me behind her.

Who could it be, but the blue sage!

His eyes fell on me.

“I know you,” he said. Then he turned to Kiara. “But I haven’t met you before.”

Kiara raised a brow at me.

“You know him?”

“None of us would be in Dharti without him,” I explained to her. She understood after a brief moment of confusion. I had told her about the sage many times before.

“You left your cave,” I said to the sage.

“Well, I noticed a hole forming in a part of the cave, and I felt inclined to walk out into the beautiful world,” the sage said. “The game world tells me that things have changed with you. Apparently you activated a time bomb, and you have lost everything you had been offered by Dharti previously.”

“Is there no way to fix this?” I asked the sage.

The sage didn’t answer. Instead he sat down on the bed, folding his legs in his preferred way of sitting.

“Will you not introduce this pretty lady to me?” the sage said, gesturing at Kiara.

“She is my girlfriend,” I told the sage.

“Like a friend who is a female?” the sage wanted clarification, “And at some point you wouldn’t mind having children with her?”

“Uh, yes…?” I said, giving Kiara an embarrassed glance as a blush warmed my ears. The two of us had never talked about marriage, let alone kids. Marriage was an idle concept for the two of us who were in a real world-game world relationship. “Like me she is also from the real world.”

The sage laughed good-naturedly at this.

“At some point you must understand that there is only one world,” he said, “what you and I speak of as the real world and the game world are merely subdivisions of it. Anyway, let’s get to your question–But do you really want to flip around the outcomes of the explosion?”

“It was definitely better before than what is now,” I said.

“But wasn’t your main objective to get out of the game world healed?”

“It was, but I can’t go out anymore, can I?”

“Well, you made your sacrifice to have power over all eviluns,” the sage said. “But where are your powers now? You don’t even have the spells and abilities that you did before the sacrifice.”

“But it was my fault that I activated the time bomb,” I said.

“There are three time bombs in this world,” the sage said, indicating the number with his fingers. “And they keep changing places everyday. Dharti is huge. Do you think that it was mere chance that you found it in your farm and happened to activate it? Think! Hadn’t you been granted Luck prior to stumbling on the bomb?”

I understood the direction the sage was pointing in. But why was the game world interested in providing me with a second shot at achieving my objective?

“Why is Dharti cheating itself just to help me?” I said.

The sage shrugged.

“That I do not know,” he said. “If I ask Dharti about it, Dharti stays quiet. I suspect that the game world has taken a liking for you. It wants to help you, but at the same time it doesn’t want to break its own rules, so it is unearthing loopholes in itself for your betterment. Whenever I mention you to Dharti any time, I can’t help but detect an excitement in the ether of the game world, of almost a fatherly kind.”

That sounded like the cards were in my favor.

“The game world tells me that you want to go to the town in search of clues,” the sage continued. “Proceed with it. Keep searching. Put in the effort. You will find a way.”

“Are you going to stay in this palace from now on?” I asked the sage. In case I needed him I would know where to come.

“Well, it’s a nice place,” the sage said, throwing a look around the spacious bedroom. “It doesn’t have windows, but I like the lighting. Sometimes small animals find their way to me. And today you have come. This was your palace, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, “ I said. “It was. Now it's yours.”