William blinked as he woke up, his blurry vision slowly coming into focus. What happened…? A vague flash of a memory suddenly came to mind. There were the demons and– That’s right! We were trying to sneak in when we got caught and then afterwards… “Esther?! Ariadne?!” he glanced around, his gaze moving to see Esther’s unconscious form.

  “Esther! Hey, Esther!” William attempted to wake Esther, but she made no reaction. She’s not… he held out his hand above Esther’s face, oh thank whatever gods are out there, she’s breathing.

  “Mmm…” Esther rolled over onto her side, “Aster, give me five more minutes to sleep. I don’t want to go to school…”

  “I’m not your big brother, Aster, and you’re not going to school!” William violently shook Esther’s shoulders, “we have no time to sleep! We just got fucking imprisoned by demons!”

  Esther abruptly jolted up, nearly colliding into William’s forehead and causing him to fall backwards.

  “Ow!” William winced. That really hurts, “can you please have some spacial awareness?”

  “Oops, sorry,” Esther laughed sheepishly, “you okay?”

  “I’m about as okay as one can be after hitting their head on a wall,” William rubbed the top of his head.

  “Hey, where’s Ariadne?” Esther asked.

  “I’ve got no clue. I literally just woke up and clearly she’s not in here with us,” William sighed, finally taking in his surroundings in depth. The two of them had been squished into a wooden box with barely enough room to sit up, “crap. We are not getting out of this unless you have any bright ideas.”

  “I was hoping that you would have the ideas.”

  “We are so fucked, aren’t we?”

  “Hey, don’t give up! We’ll never get out of here with an attitude like that!” Esther exclaimed. “There's got to be a way out of here somehow. You said it yourself earlier, this is a tutorial, not an impossible hellhole. We didn’t die to any of the monsters earlier, and I refuse to die in whatever kind of ritual or things that they plan for us because I want to see Dietrich, Scarlett, Yuno, Noah, my brother, and everyone else I care about again! I also refuse to let you die as well!”

  “Ever the optimist,” William chuckled wryly, “and obviously to match you, I’m the pessimist.”

  “Can you please just try to help me think of something?” Esther sighed in exasperation, “you’re the smart one in our friend group. The one who thinks of all the solutions to the problems Scarlett and I create. It’s okay even if it’s a risky plan that probably won’t work because Dietrich is one who keeps us from doing stupid stuff and he’s not here!”

  “If this was the old world, you should’ve been a politician. You certainly know how to make quite the compelling speech.”

  Esther snorted, “Yeah no. Way too much responsibility and reading between the lines. Can we please just get to the plan?”

  “Alright, alright. You got it. One escape plan, coming up,” William said in his best customer service voice. Esther really did know how to make a good pep talk. Okay let’s see. First, I need to review the things we have with us– wait a second. “Hey, Esther.”

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  “Yeah?”

  “Can you use that [Nexus of Stellar Bonds] attribute you got?”

  “I totally forgot about that,” Esther grinned, “see, like I said. You’re the smart one.”

  William shrugged, “More like a good memory.”

  Esther rolled her eyes, “Same difference,” she held her hands out in front of herself and took a deep breath in as she closed her eyes. “I invoke Polaris Australis, the South Star.”

  The world seemed to grow heavier with each word Esther spoke. A harsh, iridescent radiance similar to the one from the first time she had used the skill appeared in her eyes when she opened them. She pointed her finger at the side of the box and a thin, impossibly fast beam of light shot out.

  BOOM.

  The box practically exploded, erupting in a spray of sawdust and shrapenel, and sent a blast of hot air back towards Esther and William. Razor sharp splinters flew through the air, nearly cutting them to ribbons.

  William let out a low whistle, “Damn. That was really impressive.”

  “Thanks, but it’s technically not even my own power. It’s the magic I borrowed from a god,” Esther carefully tiptoed around the larger pieces of shredded wood, “where are we going next?”

  “To complete the scenario.”

  Esther stared at William for a moment, “We’re not going to go find Ariadne?”

  “Why should we?” William cocked his head, “we barely knew her.”

  “That doesn’t mean that we should just ditch her!” Esther protested, “you’re always like this, William. You’re only ever doing the logical thing. It happened back then too, when–”

  “Esther, the world has literally gone to shit. We’re not going to get anywhere by being moral and saving people who don’t matter,” William retorted.

  “But…” Esther trailed off.

  “We need to stay alive so that we can see the people who do matter. Not the random ones we just met,” William held out his hand, “are you coming or not?”

  Esther took William’s hand without hesitation, “Obviously. I promised I’d never–”

  “Stop. Please, don’t talk about it,” William’s voice quivered as he spoke. He was back to being twelve again. It was pitch black out, and the only sounds that could be heard was the pitter-patter of the rain and the roar of thunder. A lightning bolt briefly flashed, giving William just enough time to see his brother’s head with glassy, dull eyes as it rolled towards him, leaving behind a trail of blood–

  “William!” Esther shook William out of his stupor, “wake up!”

  “Sorry,” William put a hand to his cheek. It was wet. How long had it been since he’d had a flashback? Two years at the very least. How annoying. This is the worst possible time to be having a flashback to five years ago. “Let’s go.”

  Esther stared at William with a saddened gaze but didn’t say anything. He appreciated that. “Where should we go first?”

  “Somewhere, I suppose. We have no idea what this place is like so we should look for information and items we can use to complete the scenario,” William and Esther slowly crept through the hallways, keeping an eye out for any demons who might be nearby.

  “Hey, what do you think is in there?”

  “Where?” William asked.

  Esther pointed at another hallway. At the end there was a massive iron gate decorated with ornate depictions of various demonic looking creatures.

  “I think…” William grinned, “I think that’s where we’re going next.”

  “What?” Esther’s eyes nearly popped out of her skull, “you want to go over there? The place where we’re probably going to enter, and then the door is going to shut behind us and we die.”

  “No one would have a random massive steel door without good reason. There’s probably something important over there,” William argued, “we could potentially complete the scenario if we went in there.”

  “Or we could die.”

  “I thought you were the risk-taker in our group.”

  That caused Esther to pause, “I just… can’t help but worry. Getting captured made me kind of realize that this isn’t just all fun and games. It’s real life. It hadn’t sinked in before but now that it has, I…”

  “I feel the same way,” William admitted, “I’m scared. Terrified, really. I feel so far out of my depth right now. None of this makes sense, it defies all the laws of reality– or it defies the old laws of reality I suppose. I wish everything was normal right now, but it’s not, so we have to adapt.”

  “See, you are able to be an optimist,” Esther gave William a weak smile. “You’re right. Let’s go.”