The Atonement of a Writer

26. Plan Gone Awry II

When she didn't wake up, no matter what he did, he almost lost all hope of things being right again.

It wasn't just her. Everyone else didn't wake up either. No matter what he did, he couldn't reverse her magic.

Hope came in the form of a hooded stranger. When he learned who the stranger was, he'd been apprehensive, but he soon got over it, because he was desperate.

He was very desperate indeed.

~*~

In retrospect, the plan was indeed a terrible one.

After getting over her shock, she didn't hesitate and turned and ran. The Cherufe roared in anger at its prey getting away and stomped after her, crushing a few skeletons in the process. Gods, she had to live through this if only to save Julien's ass afterwards.

The plan, though simple, gambled a lot. It was based on what she did when she was trying to activate Arielle's powers in the first week. She remembered what she'd thought then.

The only thing she knew about Arielle's powers was what she had written into the story before: the most basic was the sensing of emotions, then the hearing of actual coherent sentences, all depending on the intelligence of the animal itself. After a few days of pretending to be Arielle, she'd finally sat down and made a list of conditions for the powers to activate--understanding of the animals' natures, the animal's willingness to cooperate, etc. They were just stuff off the top of her head, but since she was the writer, it should count, right? Arielle never needed anything like that, but it was well worth a try.

It was all about control. She had been trying and failing to use Arielle's powers because she had been going about it the wrong way. She was trying to do it the Arielle way, instead of the Lili way. Her initial success with the capybaras were based on what she had written down on paper in her notes.

Why wouldn't what she wrote down have any effect? She was the author, for gods' sake. She was supposed to be in control, but she wasn't, because she hadn't taken control. As long as it made sense, what she wrote about the magic in this fantasy world should have effect. Lili thought of it as closing the loopholes so the world couldn't decide for itself.

Perhaps this was too much power for her to handle. But since Lili did create this world, she had to take responsibility for it in some way. So she had found a piece of paper and had carefully written down a few words.

In Ensoria, not only do the people speak in English, but they also write in English.

Simple, yet efficient. It was a sentence that changed something minor yet so major. After she wrote that, she went out to town and found that she could read the signs and the advertisements. Nobody seemed to notice the change, but the change was there and incorporated without a second thought. Julien was the only one who noticed.

So she experimented. It felt cruel, like an abuse of power, but she had to know her limits. She wrote something inconsequential, but also something that didn't make sense.

The sky is purple.

The sky never turned purple. So it was then she concluded that not just anything worked--it had to make sense, and she had to provide an explanation.

Then, apprehensively, she wrote what would be the Cherufe's death sentence.

The Cherufe is a creature of fire and earth. It is strengthened through lava and crystals. Water blessed with the lips of an elementalist will weaken its mental fortitude. Blades of wind will lower its physical strength.