One moment Amaryllis was standing next to Juniper as he delved into his soul, the next she was in a white void. She assumed that the two things were connected, and immediately tensed up, ready to fight. Soul magic couldn’t be used at a distance, not under normal circumstances, but nothing with Juniper was even remotely close to being ‘normal circumstances’.

  She saw the man right away, given that he was the only feature across the entire white plane. He had his hands in his pockets and was looking at her, waiting. She ran through the possibilities, then decided on polite diplomacy.

  “Hello,” said Amaryllis. “I’m Amaryllis Penndraig. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “I’m the Dungeon Master,” said the man. He was wearing a t-shirt that had a fish with a mohawk, and after a moment, she realized that it must be a maned sturgeon, a fish common to the waters of Anglecynn. Its meaning eluded her, because there were other things to think about.

  “Oh,” she said softly. She immediately curtsied as low as she could go, which was quite low given that she was a trained princess of Anglecynn. “It’s an honor to meet you, sir.”

  “Alright,” said the Dungeon Master. “First, don’t stand on formality or we’ll be here all day. Second, we’re in a non-canonical timeline that you’ll retain no memory of. Third, we’re trying to get people interested in the canon timeline, and you’re here to help with that.”

  “To help … brainstorming?” asked Amaryllis. There was some color in her cheeks. She could have stopped it with blood magic and appeared entirely without passion, but she hoped that it would read as awe, and that this would be a good impression.

  “No,” said the Dungeon Master. “Anything that you can think of, I can think of. Anything you know, I know.”

  Amaryllis swallowed. “Then why am I here?” It would be impossible to manipulate him, if he was telling the truth, and she had no idea how to prove otherwise. Still, she would keep her secrets if possible and assume that it was all a trick of some kind.

  “You’re here because I want your perspective,” said the Dungeon Master. “I want you to speak directly to the Prototypical Reader.” He said it as though it held some importance, and half a second later, a young man of about Amaryllis’ age appeared next to him.

  “I’m waiting,” said the Prototypical Reader.

  Amaryllis wanted to ask ‘for what?’ because this would be a very natural thing to ask, but she worked through it quickly in her own head, and began speaking while still thinking it through so that she wouldn’t leave a long pause.

  “I’m Amaryllis Penndraig,” she said with another curtsey, this one slightly less deep, and partly for more time to think. “In the canon timeline, we’re about to embark on a quest to save the locus, which will take proscribed magics and a considerable portion of the magical might left to me by Uther Penndraig.” Her eyes flickered over to the Dungeon Master, who seemed impassive. “Once the locus has been saved, we’ll bring its magic back into the world, and from there, make a return to Anglecynn, where we’ll spar with my relatives over the future of the country and thus the Empire of Common Cause.”

  The Prototypical Reader nodded, then looked at the Dungeon Master. “How much of that is true?”

  “Most,” said the Dungeon Master. “She’s guessing, obviously. And of the things that are true, they’re not all true in this book, which is largely concerned with a character neither of you have met yet.”

  “Another companion?” asked Amaryllis, almost in spite of herself. She had been given a task, and she wasn’t sure that asking a question would work in fulfillment of that task. What was she supposed to be here, anyway? A showgirl? An assistant? The language around books was as obvious as it was confusing, but she could run with it.

  When she was young, she would have stress nightmares of being at a ball and having forgotten all the names of the guests, along with how to dance, and she would try to fake her way through it all, avoiding mentioning any name or detail that would let people know she didn’t know anything. This was that, but a thousand times worse, beyond any worry about faux pas her dreams could conjure.

  “Early on, the plan was for one companion per book,” said the Dungeon Master. “We ended up a little lopsided.”

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  “I’m sure she’ll be a compelling character,” said Amaryllis. “A fan favorite.”

  “Er,” said the Dungeon Master. “Opinions are mixed. She’s probably the most divisive of the companions, if I’m being perfectly honest with you.”

  “Well,” said Amaryllis. Her eyes went to the Prototypical Reader. “That should still be intriguing, shouldn’t it?”

  “The Atypical Reader likes her a lot,” said the Dungeon Master. As soon as he said it, another identical young man appeared beside the Prototypical Reader. “One always tells the truth, and the other always lies.”

  “Is this … a bit?” asked Amaryllis as she looked between the two. “I’m well familiar with the logic problems of old Anglecynn, as well as the Utherian tales of the Cryptic Lands.”

  “I don’t really get this,” said the Prototypical Reader as he looked at Amaryllis. “I mean, I get it, but it’s not very funny.”

  “I adore it, this is great,” said the Atypical Reader. “Ten more please.”

  “See,” said the Dungeon Master to Amaryllis. He turned to the two readers. “But you should know that the actual book is even better than stub continuity, probably.”

  “I would take it as a great honor if you were to buy the book of our adventures,” said Amaryllis, who was attempting to plow ahead in spite of the fact that the Dungeon Master seemed to have lost his place.

  “Yeah,” said the Dungeon Master. He pointed at Amaryllis. “It’ll make Amaryllis happy.”

  “Well, no,” said the Prototypical Reader. “Because she’s not going to remember any of this. And this isn’t canon.”

  “Right, but hypothetically if she would remember, and it were canon, she would want you to buy the books,” said the Dungeon Master. “We can agree on that, right?”

  The Prototypical Reader rubbed his chin. “Unless you told her you didn’t want anyone to buy the books, in which case she would be arguing that we shouldn’t buy them.”

  “Well, yes,” said the Dungeon Master after a moment.

  “And hypothetically it’s sort of an invasion of privacy,” said the Prototypical Reader.

  “She’d gladly sacrifice her privacy for the greater good,” said the Atypical Reader. “That’s very Amaryllis.”

  “Do these two … know me?” asked Amaryllis.

  “We’re on the third book,” said the Dungeon Master. “So in theory, yes, they’ve read through everything since you fell out of the plane, though most of it is from Juniper’s perspective. And also some fraction of them has read through all eight books, so knows everything that happens in the canon timeline, as well as a separate doomed timeline, and there’s the webcomic timeline, which hasn’t actually happened yet … and I suppose it’s possible though unlikely that someone has just been reading the stubs and the stub continuity, so …”

  A third reader appeared. He looked like the others, but his expression was very notably off, wild-eyed and fidgety. “I’m just here for the stubs,” he said.

  “Don’t do that,” said the Dungeon Master. “It’s not going to make any sense.”

  “Yeah, it’s free though,” said the Stub Reader. “And if you didn’t want me to read this way, you shouldn’t have put this here. Can I make a prediction?”

  “Is this still about selling books?” asked Amaryllis.

  “You can’t make a prediction based on just reading the stubs,” said the Dungeon Master, folding his arms. “It’s like … twelve chapters of three different books.”

  “Alright,” said the Stub Reader, rubbing his hands together. “So it hinges on the rite of Yaxukasu Axud, which is from chapter 45. They need someone to tend to the locus, and Juniper just became a soul mage, so obviously that was foreshadowing, and Solace is going to be reborn. But you can’t just rush along a birth, unless you have an entad that does it, and where is that entad? Kuum Doona, which is from chapter 43. It was all foreshadowing for book 3. And then Juniper is going to get pregnant, and have a child, which is like … thematically about creating things, which is his whole deal, except that along the way someone is going to die, which is also his whole deal. How close am I?”

  “Get out of here,” said the Dungeon Master. He waved his hand irritably and the three readers disappeared. He turned to Amaryllis. “What were we doing?”

  “Trying to sell books, if I understood correctly,” said Amaryllis. “Was any of that … true? I mean, there’s no entad in Kuum Doona, but there is —”

  The Dungeon Master held up his hand. “Spoilers.”

  “Sorry,” said Amaryllis. “The reader doesn’t know everything that I know?”

  “Not yet,” said the Dungeon Master.

  “And … do you think that any of this is actually going to sell a book?” asked Amaryllis.

  “That’s a fair point,” said the Dungeon Master. He ran his hand through his hair. “Well, if it doesn’t sell the book, then at least we still had fun with it.”

  Amaryllis nodded as though she understood. “I do have questions for you.”

  “Not right now,” said the Dungeon Master. “I have more of these to do. Grak is next, and I feel like he’s going to be a prick about it.”