NOVEL NEXT 44 – Outline
“... yeah, there probably is one in your room as well,” I concluded as I transformed back into my human form and walked out of the alleyway.
“Cool! I wonder where it leads,” Frank said with a wide grin.
“We can go check it out tomorrow. Right now we ought to return to… um, Wiland?” I looked at Casey questioningly.
She shrugged. “Feels a bit weird to call an entire world after one person now that it’s real, but sure, Wiland.”
I nodded.
“By the way, how’s Elyssa doing? I just kind of left yesterday…”
“She’s doing alright.” Casey smiled. “It’s a bit embarrassing, but she’s been looking around our place, learning how to use a computer, and reading my novel, calling it divine texts… ugh…”
Frank burst into laughter. “Oh man! That’s great! Now I have two friends I can tease about being goddesses who bend the laws of reality!”
A thought then nagged at me.
“Hold on… What if you change the novel’s setting or rewrite some scenes? Will the world change appropriately…?”
“Oh… That’s right! I wanted to try that. I have actually tried continuing to write a bit yesterday, but at that point in the plot, it’s just some characters in a faraway city so we can’t easily check if any of that is real now…”
“Why even bother with the small stuff?” Frank questioned. “Why not rewrite it so that the whole world is made out of gold or diamonds or something? Wouldn’t that be amazing? We could just take something random out of there and then we would be rich!”
Casey blinked and exchanged a look with me.
“I could… try? It feels wrong to completely destroy my own novel like this though…”
As silly as it seemed at first thought… What would even happen if Casey did that? And… Could anyone change the world by editing the novel? Just how much power did we have over the reality of the other world? Or would it resist changes like that because it was real now? What would happen to any inconsistencies or plot holes…?
Such thoughts ran through my mind as we made it to Casey’s place. This time, I had already told my mom I would be hanging around with my friends so she wouldn’t need to worry again. We had also taken a few magic items from RLO to test whether they still worked inside Wiland if we got the chance.
Right after we arrived, we transformed, put down our backpacks with all the magical items, and greeted Elyssa who was reading a book while lounging on the couch in the living room.
“Hello again, everyone.” She smiled at us. “I assume you decided to go back to the other world then?”
“Right, um… We thought we should go back and help Wi on her journey,” Casey announced, to which Elyssa’s eyes narrowed. “But we also can’t stick around in the other world for long periods of time because we have school. So we thought to ask whether you wanted to accompany Wi in the other world.”
Elyssa hummed.
“Traveling in a world where magic works completely differently from what I’m used to sounds very fascinating indeed. But are you sure about helping the girl? I’ve read your divine texts and her journey alone was supposed to make her into the great sage she needs to be in order to save the kingdom, wasn’t it?”
“Well, that’s… true. But um… it was only supposed to be a story. Now that I know it’s all real, I feel really bad for putting Wi through so much… Banished from the village, becoming a slave, running away and surviving in the forest alone…”
The old woman nodded.
“I understand how you feel. I would also want to help her. However, what if my actions cause a – what did you call it again? – a Butterfly Effect and she won’t be able to unite the elves and humans in the end like your outline says? What if my presence instead leads to her death and dooms the entire world?”
That brought her up short. My friend now seemed torn and I similarly felt uncertain about what to do. Would refusing to help be the moral thing to do if you knew things would turn out okay in the end without your help?
“Eh, honestly? We already entered the place and probably changed some tiny things so the Butterfly Effect is already happening, I think,” Frank interjected. “I say we barge in and help as much as we can and if things go tits up, Casey can just rewrite her novel and make things okay again.”
“Oh…?” Elyssa’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s right. Somehow, I forgot you are the goddess of that world with full control over it. It never occurred to me that rewriting reality is a viable solution…” She murmured with a wry smile before turning contemplative. “But in that case… Could you change the entire world in such a way that Wi doesn’t even need to become a sage and unite the people in the first place…?”
“Well… We still don’t know what exactly I can do or if I even can change anything at all now…” Casey admitted. “What if the world is now the way it is no matter what I change about the novel?”
“Well, then you can just try changing something real quick and then we take a peek into the world to see if it worked,” our bull-horned friend suggested.
He was right, I realized. We were all theorizing about what was possible, but we could always just… try changing something to see just how much power Casey had over Wiland before we decided on what we wanted to do.
“I… Alright. Let me make some small change and then we can go check it,” Casey said with a firm nod.
With our murmurs of agreement, we headed to Casey’s room and she sat by her computer as I eyed the closed portal warily. She booted it up, opened the document titled The Great Sage Wi, and hummed to herself.
“Make the castle out of candy or something,” Frank suggested with a snigger.
“That’s not exactly a subtle change…” I muttered with a roll of my eyes.
“How about… Right, remember the chess board thrown around in the common room? They had black and white pieces. I’m gonna change them to blue and red instead.”
“Huh, alright. Pretty random and much more boring, but sure.” Frank shrugged.
Casey had to find the exact scene where Wi was supposed to see and make note of the chess board when exploring the abandoned keep, and simply changed a few words there. Once done, she stood up without turning off the computer, everyone got ready behind me, and I opened the portal once more.
I crossed to the other side and was about to step aside when my ears picked up on a sound off in the corridor. My head immediately whipped around but I saw nothing.
“... hello?”
No reply.
“Renee? Something wrong?”
“I thought I heard something…” I murmured as I made way for the others. “Do you hear anything, Casey?”
As the three stepped into the corridor, Casey’s bunny ears twitched as she looked down both of the corridor ends.
“... No? I don’t hear anything.”
“Maybe it was a rat?” Frank suggested before leaning closer and whispering, “Or maybe Wi is already here and we startled her, so she’s hiding from us.”
I tensed up at his suggestion and the four of us exchanged a glance.
“... The secret passageway is supposed to be open, so maybe something snuck inside the castle, I guess. We can go check it. If Wi is here, she should have closed it behind her,” Casey suggested.
Just as she said that, my ears picked up on a sharp intake of breath just around the corner. I exchanged a quick wide-eyed look with Casey, who must have heard it too, and slowly glanced in the direction where it came from.
“... Wi…?” Casey carefully asked, panic visible on her face.
There was a moment of silence as we waited for a reply.
Then finally…
“Who… Who are you? H-how do you know my name…?” came the shaky girl’s voice from around the corner.
Crap.
She must have come here at some point after we had left yesterday.
We should have expected this.
