—
Tegan fell back on the floor of the hub room, looking at the high, high ceiling. “I’m not doing this anymore,” he declared to nobody, because there was nobody here.
He’d been mapping the teleportation doors for weeks and was most of the way done. The next step would be, once he’d figured out how many doors there actually were and once he had a functional map of where they went, to figure out where the places they went were. Most of them should be ziggurats in Yavhore, which would mean that once Tegan got this down, he’d have a fully functional way of going anywhere on the continent whenever he wanted.
The problem was he didn’t fucking want that.
What good did it do Tegan to have access to an entire continent—or even several entire continents—if none of them got him any closer to his actual goal? It felt like he was being funneled into a character arc he didn’t want. He wasn’t interested in solving the mysteries of Nova’s lost past. He wanted to be in a time travel story, dammit. He wanted to go back and get his parents back.
So Tegan had decided that he was done. “I’m not doing it anymore,” he told the Narrator. “You can just summon someone else to do your bullshit historical mystery. I’m just going to lay right here. Go fuck yourself.”
So Tegan lay there on the floor, glaring at the ceiling. He wasn’t sure how long he had to do that before he became boring and the Narrator stopped narrating about him so he could…
Hold on, how long had Tegan been on-screen? He was getting better at telling when he was on-screen, like there was a small tingle in the back of his balls telling him people were watching him. This was what, the fourth time now? That was…weird. He wasn’t really doing anything, especially right now.
Unless he was doing something. He was solving the ancient Novan mysteries, or whatever. He didn’t want that character arc. But…if it was his character arc, it might lead to him getting what he wanted, because that was how narratives worked, right?
And if Tegan got what he wanted while solving the mysteries of the planet, that would be proof that the world was a narrated story. He could get his family back and be proven right to the world.
Tegan sat up, full of determination, and when he did, there was a werewolf with thick garters on crouching and looking at his maps. “Uh. Hi?”
“Hi,” said the werewolf, looking up. He had greyish hair and green eyes, and was only Tegan’s age or so. Which meant nothing, since Tegan was much older than he looked, and so, he suspected, was this werewolf. “Sorry. We’re not supposed to meet yet, but I got impatient and then a time-spirit told me that was okay just this once. You’re not alone, okay?”
“Uh. Okay?” Tegan asked. “Thanks?”
The werewolf smiled cutely, and he handed Tegan a small book. “This was sitting over there when I landed. I don’t know if you dropped it? Anyway, I have to go. See you soon, Tegan.”
And he disappeared with a small mechanical sound, leaving no trace. Huh. He hadn’t been wearing a Temporal Bureau uniform, not unless they’d changed their policy on red and white skintight jumpsuits since the last time Tegan had seen them, which meant he was…someone else. Maybe a time mafia operative? Was Tegan being recruited?
Tegan didn’t play well on teams.
He looked down at the book, flipping through it. It was full of the same symbols that were all over the ziggurats and here in the hub room. And on alternating pages were simple words and sentences in Razth. It was only twenty pages long and Tegan was no linguist, but with this he could…
He looked all around him, at all the writing. With this he could do a lot, if he kept at it.
Tegan sighed. “You didn’t have to do this for me,” he muttered. “I decided to keep hunting you down all on my own.”
He finished flipping through the book, and went to close it. On the frontplate, in scratchy, hard to read handwriting, was an inscription. You’re someone’s favourite character. -P.
Tegan rolled his eyes, blushing a little. “Fuck off,” he told the Narrator. “You can talk to me normally instead of narrating me magical dictionaries and making hot time werewolves deliver them. Also he could have stayed for longer.”
But of course he got no answer, so Tegan just sighed again, shook his head, and went back to work. He had a mystery to solve.
—
How Best to Use a Sword 