Hopping Celestial Fox

“What… do you mean…?” I asked after a moment of stunned silence.

“This keep… this world is from my novel,” Casey repeated. “Either that, or it’s so similar to how I imagined everything that you might as well just call it my novel.”

“I… but…”

“Okay, hold up!” Frank raised his hands. “Are you saying that you came up with everything in this world yourself? Or did you like… have some kind of psychic dreams that told you about this world and you got inspired by them?”

Casey frowned.

“I don’t remember having any precognitive dreams or the like… I’m pretty sure the novel is my original creation… And, well, if I somehow just happened to have created a story that perfectly matched an already-existing world… then what even is the difference?”

That… was a good point. It didn’t really matter whether the novel or the world came first. The result was the same.

Elyssa then chuckled.

“Turning a fictional world into reality. That can’t be called anything but an act of god.” She eyed me with a smug smile.

I groaned as I rubbed my face with a hand.

“I didn’t do anything… It’s the portals…” I mumbled before speaking louder as a thought occurred to me. “Moreover, didn’t Casey create this world? Wouldn’t she be the goddess of this world?”

“Huh?! Uh… I… I guess?” The supposed goddess of the world we were in shuffled her feet.

Naturally, Frank didn’t fail to seize the moment.

“Ah! Casey, the bunny goddess! Welcome to the Pantheon of the Hopping Celestial Fox!” He made a very elegant bow.

“Frank, stop that!” Casey shouted at him, her face heating up. “I just wrote a story! Renee’s portal made it real!”

“A collaborative effort, mhm.” Frank nodded.

I let out a sigh.

“So… what does this even mean?” I wondered out loud.

“It means that… theory number two was correct, I guess,” Casey replied with a hum once she got her fluster under control. “The game was… always just a game–” She gave Elyssa an apologetic smile. “-- but you opening that portal and going inside was what made it real.”

“You gave me life, then,” Elyssa added blithely.

My lips thinned into a line. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Especially since Elyssa seemed to flippant about this.

“Hah… So the devs really were innocent all along! They had no idea! They still probably have no idea! They really think you are some kind of glitch!”

I winced.

“I was more of a virus than a goddess…” I mumbled.

“You were a good virus, though! You helped Elyssa be a real girl!” Frank grinned.

I gave him a deadpan stare.

“All’s well that ends well, right?”

I let out a sigh, my earlier determination to keep exploring the portals suddenly nowhere to be seen.

“I… Okay…” I shook my head. “I… I’m not sure what to do now. Should we keep exploring the portals? Should we leave and never open another portal again?”

Was it ethical to open new portals and make more things real? Was it ethical to not open the portals and deny everyone in the other worlds the possibility of being real? I had no idea how to approach this.

“Wha–! No way! You can’t just ignore the magical portals only you can see!”

I shrugged at Frank's response.

“Why not? I’ve been doing it my whole life.” I let out a sigh. “Look, let’s just… go back for now. We’ve been here for a while and I have a lot to think about. We can always come back later. Since the keep is abandoned, there is no danger of turning any of the characters here into real people, right?”

I glanced at Casey.

“Uh… Wi, the main character, is supposed to take refuge here at the start of the story… But seeing as everything was still a mess in the common room, she probably still hasn’t come here yet.”

She then raised the staff and waved it around.

“And when she returns here later in the story, she’s supposed to discover the secret passage and take this staff.”

“Right… So I guess you’re gonna put the staff back and leave it for her?”

“Umm…” Casey stopped and looked at the staff in her hands with a frown, seemingly torn on what to do for a moment, before sighing and reluctantly placing it back on the table. “Yeah, I guess I am…”

“Hey, don’t worry! We still have magical items from RLO, remember? You don’t need this staff!”

“Right, yeah. Let’s go back then. It’s probably getting late.”

With that, we finally left. Back out of the research room, through the tunnel, and into the keep’s cellar again. Casey waved her hand at the tunnel and murmured some more gibberish to make the wall reappear, and then we headed back upstairs.

“Oh yeah, by the way, what does your portal radar say? Any other portals in this world?” Frank suddenly asked.

I stopped and glanced at him before diving into my sixth sense and searching for nearby portals.

“There’s… a few. But they are all faint, so… they are probably very far away.”

“Aww…”

“Wait.” Casey raised a finger. “What are the other portals, even?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where would one even lead? Is this world a fictional story within other, completely unrelated worlds as well? Did someone in a parallel universe also just happen to come up with this exact world and write an exact copy of my novel?”

I blinked.

“Or would it be… a fictional world within a fictional world…?”

She let that moment sink in.

“Ah, shit. Now we gotta find another portal to figure this out!” Frank exclaimed.

I grunted as I set my jaw.

I was curious about this as well, but I still didn’t know what to think about being responsible for literally bringing entire worlds to life just by opening a portal to them.

As my friends theorized about the nature of the other portals, we made it back to the one that led back to Earth and I wasted no time in opening it again.

As soon as I did, my phone rang several times in a row.

“Huh?”

I fished it out, seeing that it indeed was quite late already, and unlocked it. There were several messages from Mom.

“Ah, crap! I forgot to tell Mom where I was going!”

I jumped through the portal and quickly dialed her back. She picked up within two rings.

“Renee! What happened?! Where are you?! Are you okay?!”

“U-uh, hi Mom. Sorry, we were just hanging around Casey’s place and lost track of time…”

“Oh… Thank goodness! I thought something might have happened to you. Why did you turn off your phone?”

“Oh, err, it ran out of charge without me noticing.”

“Ah, I see…” I heard a tired sigh on the other end and couldn’t help but wince in guilt. “It’s nice that you are hanging out with friends, but I want to know next time you go out like this, alright? Especially if you want to stay so late.”

I glanced out of the window and winced again at the sunset.

“Right, yeah, sorry… I completely forgot to send you a message or something.” I nodded. “I’m gonna go back home now. I really wasn’t planning on staying so long here…”

“That’s alright, honey. See you when you get here, then.”

The call ended and I couldn’t help but deflate. So much for not adding more to Mom’s worries.

“Oof… I guess we kind of left in a hurry, didn’t we?” Frank chuckled.

I turned around to find everyone else back inside Casey’s room and eyed Frank suspiciously.

“How come your parents aren’t worried about you?”

“Eh.” He shrugged. “I’m a free spirit. They are used to me running around late into the night.”

“Right… Well, anyway. Like I said, I’m gonna go home now and… probably take some time to think about everything.”

“Right, yeah. I… also have some things to think about,” Casey admitted, eyeing the laptop on her desk.

Her novel.

Then, as per usual, I closed the portal behind us.

Me and Frank transformed back with a shudder, said goodbye to Casey and Elyssa and headed back home.

Once the two of us split up outside, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by all the revelations from today.

I’d wanted answers? Well, I had gotten them.

Some of them, at least. Others still eluded me.

Like where had the portals come from? Had I been creating them subconsciously myself? Why were the portals in those specific spots and lead to those specific worlds?

Why Casey’s unfinished novel?

A video game world was one thing. That was programmed and meticulously designed by a huge team of developers. It was more or less a fully functional world already.

But Casey’s novel? That was just some words in a text document. There were a myriad of ways to imagine what the exact world looked like, and yet, according to Casey, it looked exactly as she had envisioned it.

How was that possible?

Just what were the criteria for the appearance of a portal?