After the incident, Arden led the party back into the camp proper. The group received strange looks and strange mutterings, but they ignored them. Even Kepler was able to tune them out, though that was more to do with her still being in shock from being attacked by another person. She shuffled through the campsite in a daze, not really paying attention to anything right now. When they moved, she silently followed behind, and when they stopped, she walked into Arden’s back, unaware that they had stopped to begin with. After she bumped into him and apologized, she realized that they were at her tent.

  “You should rest for a while,” Sya told her. “Sleep off the shock and come back ready for more.”

  “B-but I don't think we have t-time.”

  “We do.”

  Vera entered the tent first, alone. Through the fabric, there was a dim light that shined briefly, then she stuck her head out of the flap with a smile.

  “It’s ready for you.”

  “W-what’s ready?”

  Vera took a step back and Sya gently pushed Kepler into her tent before she and Arden entered as well, zipping it up behind them.

  The first thing Kepler noticed was an extravagant bed, as it took up the majority of the space of the already enormous tent. Fitted with more luxurious sheets and blankets than she had ever seen, even with her life outside of the slums, it looked amazing and likely felt even better.

  ‘Why is it so big?’ Kepler wondered, before her mind arrived at an answer. ‘Don’t tell me they expect us to share it together!?’

  The nervous girl trembled as she looked back at her party members looking at her with expectant eyes. She went bright red.

  ‘No way! That can’t be it! But there are so many people around with their eyes on us! They wouldn’t try to do this in the middle of the assessment! And even if they would…’

  The images of Arden’s and Sya’s faces appeared in her head before she shook her head roughly with her trembling eyes shut tightly.

  ‘T-they're related! They definitely won't do anything like that! I'm just being paranoid!’

  Right as she convinced herself that nothing was going to happen, Sya grabbed her hand and led her to the bed. She couldn't resist as Sya fell onto the bed pulling the nervous wreck of a girl down with her.

  Sya said something, but Kepler couldn’t hear it over the sound of her pounding heart. Her breathing got shallower in direct proportion to her bright red face. She saw Sya smile and say something that she didn’t catch, and then Kepler was out.

  *****

  “There’s enough time for her to sleep before we have to move out, right?” Arden asked, nodding to the alchemist sleeping on the Usurper’s Throne.

  “It’ll be fine,” Sya said, pulling herself from the warm embrace of the Satellite. “It only took us like half an hour to rest up back in the Mausoleum. Besides, she’s not sleep-deprived. Only in a bit of shock. She just needs time to let go.”

  “I hope so. I can't believe that bastard tried to attack her.”

  “I can’t believe you used the Codex to make yourself look better in front of her,” Vera said. “That’s pretty messed up. You knew that he was going to attack her, so you took the hit instead. Now you look all righteous and crap.”

  “No offense, Arden,” Sya said. “But what the hell?”

  Arden sighed.

  “I swear that wasn’t what I was going for. It just ended up that way. Ever since I got the Codex from Podren, we haven’t appeared in it.”

  “Really?” Sya asked.

  “Yes. Because of our nature, we are outside of fate. It took a bit for you to get there, but you won’t appear in it now either, while me and Vera have been paradoxes for much longer.”

  “So then why bother looking through it?”

  “Because it's weird. How well do you remember the movies we watched when we were younger?”

  “I remember most of them.”

  “Okay, well, do you remember in some movies when someone would be killed in the past, or erased from time or something like that? Do you remember how the camera would show a picture with their family as the character slowly fades from it?”

  “Yeah,” Sya nodded.

  “Where are you going with this?” Vera asked.

  “If the person was erased from time, they wouldn't just disappear leaving the wife hugging nothing. The entire picture would disappear, or the people in it would be rearranged to show that there was never anyone there,” Arden said. “We're like that in the book. We're the time-travel picture fade.”

  “You're losing me now,” Vera said.

  “If the book actually showed the future, and if we are actually cut from fate, then there would be no mention of us or our actions. The book should show a future that we haven't touched.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “And it doesn't do that?”

  “No,” Arden shook his head. “I wasn't sure about when I used it against the blast bull, but the episode with Kepler proved it. It very specifically mentioned that Kepler was being targeted while training to prove a point. If we were outside of fate and unwritable-”

  “Then Kepler wouldn't have been training in the book at all,” Vera finished. “Because that is something that only happened because she met us.”

  “What does it mean though?" Sya asked.

  Arden said nothing for a moment. All he had to go on were suspicions that would more than likely never pan out.

  “...I don't know. But anyway, that's why I used the Codex out there.”

  The tension of the moment was broken when the sleeping Kepler spoke through a haze of rest. She squirmed atop the bed with a thin layer of sweat appearing on her forehead, still flushed in the cheeks.

  “No…not there…not here…I'm not experienced enough for something like this…I'd only get in the way…”

  ‘What the hell is she dreaming about?’ All three of them thought.

  “Let's head back out,” Arden said.

  “Yeah…” the girls responded.

  *****

  A few hours had passed since then, and it was like nothing happened that morning. No one mentioned the elephant in the room, nor where he had been taken after his failed attack.

  Kepler's shock wore off as soon as she woke up, embarrassment replacing it instead, which the rest of the party thought was better than freaking out. Fortunately, Kepler had yet to ask the obvious question, that being if Arden’s book read the future, why did he just let the future play out, risking harm to Kepler. Whether or not it was due to Kepler not putting the pieces together, or just not wanting to ask the question was unknown to them at the moment.

  Arden sincerely hoped it was the former. He hoped that if she knew, she would ask about it, and not let the endless what-ifs race around in her skull.

  Honestly, the biggest change in the past few hours came not from Kepler, but from everyone else on the expedition. They all looked at Arden’s party with uncertainty, especially Arden himself. Most everyone agreed with what he said to Schrell, but no one wanted to come out and say it. It seemed that he had accidentally erected a wall in the process of defending Kepler.

  He sighed, eliciting a questioning look from Volis, one of the few people who instead appeared pleased with Arden after the event.

  “Do you miss her that much already?” He asked with a grin, tearing his eyes away from the black haired beauty doing battle with a giant mantis almost twice as tall as her.

  “What?” Arden said, snapping back to reality.

  “Do you-?”

  Arden realized what he said two words into Volis spiel and cut him off.

  “Yes!” He said, dramatically falling to his knees with fake tears in his eyes. “There’s a Vera shaped hole in my heart when I'm not at her side!”

  Liva raised an eyebrow at the terminology.

  “At her side? You're the side piece?”

  “I’m her boy toy.”

  “You know you said that out loud right? Aren't you embarrassed?”

  “Not if I'm the one doing it. If Sya said something about me like that I'd bury my head in a dune splicer burrow.”

  Sya took a big inhale of breath.

  “That wasn't an invitation, Sya,” Arden hurriedly said.

  The mantis brought down both of its bladed arms towards Vera, who sat still with her sword at the ready, waiting for the right moment. Right before the scythes cut through her, Vera swung her sword upwards in a wide arc, cutting through the chitinous material of the bug's inherent weapons. She was sprayed with its purple blood as the mantis recoiled in pain at having been outclassed in the manner of fighting that came most naturally to a creature with two sharp blades for arms.

  It gave a wicked shriek that was quickly silenced once Vera leapt into the air after infusing her legs with stellar essence to gain greater momentum and severed its head.

  You have slain red-tier protostar, predator mantis.

  Vera's sword with a dim red light disappeared into a swarm of matching red sparks into her soul cluster and she took a cleansing breath.

  “Not too bad,” she said, a little miffed that he had still yet to receive a Satellite.

  “Alright, Vera!” Arden cheered, loudly enough for the majority of the expedition crew to look at him with flat glares for praising his incredibly talented and hot girlfriend.

  ‘Sucks for them,’ he thought with a smile.

  “A-Arden?”

  “What's up Kepler?”

  “A-are you an attention whore?”

  There was an oppressive silence after the surprisingly blunt question from the timid girl, until Sya snickered, then laughed, then cackled. Volis’ team joined in on the ribbing as Vera walked back up to them after killing one of her Celestials.

  “Are we laughing at Arden’s expense again?” She asked.

  Sya wiped a tear from her eye as she answered.

  “Kepler called Arden a whore!”

  “I d-d-didn't mean it rudely!” Kepler defended herself, forgetting that she should have denied the claim entirely, not just the intent.

  “I mean, he is,” Vera said. “Only for me though.”

  “And now I'm no longer interested in this joke,” Sya said. “Can you stop joking about pegging my brother?”

  “Can you-” Vera was cut off by Sya.

  “I swear if you tell me to make him less pink or something…”

  There was another pause as Vera tried to quickly think of a different ending to her joke.

  “...can you stop giving me such good reactions? You know we both feed on that sort of thing.”

  “What did you mean about me being pink?” Arden asked, sweat trickling down his face as he pretended not to know. This was what he meant about being embarrassed if someone else embarrassed him.

  Lodi cleared her throat from a few steps away, causing the conversation to die down.

  “Applicant Vera.”

  “Yes, Instructor?”

  “When most Starborn are put against a Celestial with a very pronounced strength, they will fight against it using its weakness. Instead, you fought it at its strongest. Why?”

  This had become routine by now. Every time someone killed a Celestial, Lodi would interrogate them. She asked pointed questions about their methodology, why they did what they did, and whether they could have done any better.

  “Because I was confident.”

  “Would you say the same thing if it was rank or even a tier higher?”

  “I can't say about a higher tier, because I would have avoided a fight where I am that outclassed, but I would have relied on swordsmanship against a higher rank Celestial as well.”

  “Is that arrogance?"

  “No,” Vera said with a shake of her head. “Swordsmanship is my strength as well.”

  “There are times where we can't avoid fights with Celestials of a higher tier. What would you have done if you couldn't avoid that fight?”

  There was no need for even a second of thought.

  “I would have used my swords against it as well. Against a higher tier, everyone is pretty much dead. At that point, I can only do the best I can. And the best I can do is done with my sword.”